A Snake Came Crawling: A SHIELD Codex
by KhamanV
Summary: Thor's visions and Loki's warnings combine when the God of Thunder confesses his fears about a great and final doom gathering around Asgard. But Ragnarok's legend is known - the twilight of the Gods coming at the end of a great war, and the betrayals of Loki. A destiny Loki has refused. If he will not attempt to bring the cycle of the gods to a close - who will? (Codex 11)
1. Bedeviled

A Snake Came Crawling: A SHIELD Codex

 _Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost ~ Ovid, Metamorphoses_

. . .

1\. Bedeviled

. . .

The customer in the back of the curved booth liked to smile in an open, honest way that made his eyes shut every time he did it. Goda liked that. It told him the young narcotics buyer was stupid enough to not realize he should never take his eyes off a potential threat. Goda was absolutely that. Under his palm was one of the locked, specialized phones The Hand used to organize the new rash of street-level sales. With Madame Gao out of the market, there were a lot of these deals to profit from. Over by the door was Hachiro, monitoring the last round of the security checks. Making damned sure young Mr. Locke's bona fides lined up properly. If they did not, Mr. Locke would die swiftly. But not painfully. That would be impolite.

The Hand took few chances running any new business through the Kitchen. The furor from the current daimyo overseeing the organization over the last of the special 'imports' had been nigh unbearable; the long-term losses to the American branch incalculable. It was a tactical rally from Matsu'o Tsurayaba that kept them in the city for now. Matsu'o and his steel hands, who had survived interference from multiple outsiders and remained true to his brothers. He remained in Japan, but his presence was always felt. In time, perhaps they would try another such import. Once they knew the red devil was not breathing quite so closely to their necks.

For now they fed lightly on men like this one. Goda smiled across the table, feeling the heavy weight of the gun resting on his thigh. The tips of his teeth were gold; not only in an ostentatious threat, but a necessity from years of merciless training. The young man smiled back again, the affable mouth broad and rubbery under a slick dark haircut. An upstanding salaryman, with a little more style than some. Goda pitched his voice loud enough to carry just over the roaring techno that filled the nightclub. He privately loathed the music, but it served a good purpose. "I am very sorry about the wait, Mr. Locke. Not much longer now. A final check."

"Can't be helped!" Goda listened to the man's chirping voice and muddy American accent with silent disgust. Neon flickered along the thin cheeks, reflections from the lights above the DJ table. "I mean, I mostly bought uptown, kept my weenie little distro action there. It's not like you have _shopping records_." He followed it with a laugh that held just the right trace of nervousness. So the new buyer wasn't a complete idiot. He knew his place. "But I never got in with Gao, so I never came down this far into the Kitchen. She ran a very tight shop."

"She did. But with her graceful departure, new opportunities open. We wet our beaks anew."

"Money to be made."

Goda leaned back, keeping Hachiro in view. "That is the shortsighted but ruefully necessary view, Mr. Locke. Business with us, however, requires an understanding of the greater horizon. Compliance. Acceptance is not necessary, but if you wish to share from our cup, you will see the perfection of our method." He smiled back, just wide enough to flash his teeth in another message.

"I'm easy," said Locke, bright brown eyes in a lightly rounded face that was just different enough from his real one to never trip The Hand's recognition. He didn't so much as wince when a discordant note seemed to enter in under the dubstep drop, but he mentally noted it with a trace of chilly concern. That was not according to plan. "I get along with everybody."

Goda noticed the change in the music, too. He looked from Hachiro over to Shingen. The overseer of the club's security looked tense in a way that made Goda's fingers tighten around the gun. The new buyer's voice cut in. "Something wrong?"

Hachiro looked over his shoulder, then nodded to Goda. Two fingers tapped at his suit lapel in the agreed-upon signal. Goda relaxed slightly, turning back to the buyer. The sound was nothing. Shingen had already nodded to someone to investigate it thoroughly. A pipe under the building, perhaps. Much of the neighborhood's architecture was old – if Fisk could have only finished the damnable bargain... but this was a digression. He took the gun from his thigh and laid it on the table, ensuring the muzzle pointed harmlessly at the wall. Locke paled, clearly not recognizing that this act indicated an honorable promise to end the threat between them. Goda smiled again. The man would be easy to work. "You are now a welcome guest, Mr. Locke. The Hand will be happy to begin forming a business arrangement that will be most beneficial to both our parties."

"I'm kind of hoping to stay small," said Locke, modestly rubbing his palms together. "I know my limits."

"A wise man does." Damn, there went the soft rumble again. A few worried-looking attendees passed through the club's floor, exchanging glances and gestures. They knew better than to trouble the more secluded booths along the wall, where the real business was handled. Was something wrong with the kitchen? His smile faltered when he considered the _other_ possibility. Shingen stirred, nodding sharply once to get his attention. "I must beg one more indulgence. There is some minor matter I must attend to." He snapped his fingers towards the hostess. "Another drink will be brought for you. And then the formalities."

"Of course!" Locke leaned forward to say something else when the lights of the club abruptly went out. At first there was silence as the last note of the music faded into a dead electronic squeal. He shoved back in his seat when Goda barked at him to stay, shoving himself out of the booth with a quick grace that belied the enormity of The Hand's current Hell's Kitchen enforcer. Noises scattered along the floor, people rushing the dimly lit exit signs.

More rumbling from beneath the thin floor, dull smacking sounds. Loki narrowed his eyes, considering the problem with mute annoyance. The expression distorted the mask of 'Locke's' illusion, making the young businessman look harshly cynical. No, this was not according to plan at all.

Soft popping noises filled the club's floor and he heard the thick form of Goda take a tumble well before he could get out of the room. The night-night gun kept going in rapid fire, its handler ensuring that every one of The Hand's operatives within range were temporarily neutralized. In the dimness of the far door, a small but powerful maglite flashlight lit up. Agent Bobbi Morse kept it off of Loki's now unveiled face, shining it off the table's surface in front of him instead. Her long wig had disappeared in favor of her own tightly knotted hair and she looked wholly in her element despite the uniforms given to the club's entirely female staff. "So, we got a complication brewing downstairs. Figured we should probably go take a look at it. You ready?"

Loki slid out of the booth with catlike ease, smoothing down the offensively cheap tie he wore as part of his undercover role with a slender hand. He smiled, his green eyes alert and his teeth feral. "Always."

. . .

Loki let Bobbi lead them both through the now-deserted kitchen and down the stairwell to where the _real_ cooking happened. He wrinkled his nose at the scent of mind-altering chemicals in the air and the wafting traces of distant smoke from somewhere further in, ignoring the knocked-out ninjas scattered occasionally along the floor. Not Bobbi's handiwork. This was a quick, brutal job, done by a agile but distinctly male figure. Power as much as speed. He arched an eyebrow. "The local color is certainly _enthusiastic_ about his work, isn't he?"

"Secondary goal on this op _was_ to get a look at the guy if we could swing it." She kept clearing the corners, maglite held in one hand and kept atop the gun in the other to light wherever she aimed. With the civilian floor swept, she'd switched from less lethal to fatal as all hell. Her battle staves sat at her hip, immediately accessible and absolutely not her first choice. The Hand was universally brutal at short-range, and now they were going to be cranky. She wasn't going to let any of them get that close, regardless of having backup in the form of a six foot tall stick of magical alien deity. "Since he just screwed up our primary, I'm all for arranging a little exit interview."

"You sound about as happy as I feel with this turn." He snorted, amused at her disdain.

"Least we got _some_ actionable intel out of the job. More if I can get a good look down here before it all burns up. Plus, I never have to hear you complain again about the suits you wore on this job." Bobbi paused by another stairwell, going dead silent. This one was supposed to be locked at all times, according to the sign written in neat, formal kanji beside it. It was currently wide open – probably the red boy's entry point. Probably going to be the exit, too. Her instincts were immediately backed by the almost physical sense of Loki tensing behind her. She tilted her head, just in time to catch the almost soundless whisper from him.

 _"_ _Close."_

And then the rapid rush of wind past her, a dash of motion so fast she almost missed it. She snarled, making an immediate judgment call. "I'll sweep the scene – you catch up!"

Loki didn't waste time acknowledging the plan. He simply disappeared up the stairwell in the wake of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, fleeting enough to get right on the vigilante's heels.

. . .

The stairwell went directly to the roof. According to the few scraps of profile SHIELD had on the vigilante, this was going to be his terrain of choice. It would be better if Loki could close the gap and lay a hand on him before reaching the ledge of the club's roof. And as damnably fast as the man in the absurd leather onesie moved, not as simple as he'd expected.

He could see the dim outline of the 'Devil' ahead of him, powerful thighs working like unstoppable pistons to get him up and away from the pursuer at speeds Loki had to concede were remarkable. Once they were level, Loki's naturally superior strength meant he could launch and land on the man like a cat. There would be the risk of some minor breakage. Humans tended to be woefully fragile, but this one... this one seemed durable enough to bear it. He began to calculate his move, the moonlight beginning now to edge the door at the stop of the stairwell. He would land lightly, as best he may.

He lost two steps when the vigilante didn't keep busting forward. Instead, he danced barely to the side of the door and slapped two stolen flashbang devices down towards Loki. It forced him to pause and swat them away, closing his eyes and letting his ears take the brunt of it.

Through the screeing _eeeeeee_ that the weapon left to muddle his mind, he dimly realized an important detail about the maneuver and filed it away for later study. His senses picked up the vigilante studying for him a second longer than he should have.

And then, wonder of wonders, the vigilante spoke. His voice was a gravelly disguise but still filled with the appropriate startled examination. "What the hell are _you?_ "

Loki got his bearings back and started to move again, annoyed and somehow perversely delighted with the turn. A real challenge – one that could _see._ The vigilante was also back on the move. "Hold still a moment and we'll talk about it."

"Can't. Got a thing. Date night."

Six meters between them. They were both through the door now and pacing across the wide, gravel-strewn roof. Five meters. Loki was closing. The man in red whipped around and flung a single baton at Loki's right knee and got the side of the calf underneath before it bounced back to his hand. Loki hissed in pained surprise, stumbling just enough to slow him again. The scar from the matter in Scotland was still healing, the muscles underneath it easily shocked into fresh offense.

The vigilante _knew._ All but smelled the injury on him and took his shot for the advantage.

Seven meters now. Eight. Damn the human!

The vigilante sprung up to the lip of the roof and half turned to regard his pursuer. The face was still obscured under a thick mask, one that covered his eyes. "Tell SHIELD the Kitchen's under control. You want The Hand, well, you're not alone. But you're not gonna push around in my town without supervision. You want to talk, I know you can find me. But it'll be on my terms. Not yours." He paused as he turned towards his drop. "Sorry about hitting you in the leg. That was a cheap shot."

Loki bit off the snap he'd already come up with, catching up to the ledge as the man dropped gracefully down into the night. He watched the swan dive that turned into a catch and swing, the man using the rusted scaffolding to sweep his way towards the next building. He yanked the phone out his pocket and called out without looking down at it, still following the vigilante's motion with unblinking eyes. "Secondary is moving away from the scene. I can reacquire handily. Do I pursue?"

Three buildings away. Logic told him the vigilante was going to take the corner swivel at the next and get out of his follower's sight range. His connection crackled, driving him to impatience. "Do you wish I pursue?"

He tensed, ready to go in case the vigilante made the corner. Then came the familiar voice of Skye – _Daisy,_ he swiftly corrected himself, _she has chosen this name for her own_ – Agent Daisy Johnson through the crackle.

 _"_ _Abort."_

He snarled soundlessly as the vigilante approached his turn, his eyes narrowing at the human's glide. A few good leaps and he could still catch up. Ensnare the man, for insult and evasion both. Bring him back to base all but tied up with a bow, in defiance of orders but in service to a kind of willful expediency. It would be tactical. Beneficial. His mind could come up with all sorts of excuses to do what he wished.

The old temptations never really left. Loki pushed himself back from the ledge and let his gaze break from the man. Let the prey go, by his whim. He took a soft inhale, then ate the temptations down and remembered why he chose the way he did. The way he could. Because he could change.

Let the vigilante run. There would be another time. He turned his attention back to the phone in his hand. "Subject has disappeared. The operation is over."

 _"_ _See you tonight for final debrief."_ Agent Johnson rang off cheerfully, leaving him alone at the edge of the night's sky.


	2. Paper Footballs

2\. Paper Footballs

. . .

Daisy crossed her arms across the comfortably hideous flannel shirt she layered over a black tee in better condition, yawning hard enough to crackle her jaw. Her agent's lanyard crinkled against the tee when she hugged herself to try and stay awake. Her current operational team was arranged around the conference table, most of them looking even more exhausted than she felt. Only Loki looked mostly with it, making the occasional annoyed face at the Director at the other head of the table. Probably just because he could, or maybe because Coulson was experimenting with his latest replacement hand by folding clunky paper footballs and chucking them at the doziest. Literally kids. She cleared her throat to get what attention she could. "'Kay, so, Chi-town's down and we got multiple confirmations at all scenes that Tsurayaba's been a homeboy. Now, the Manhattan job's done. That's the last rundown we gotta get to tonight, and then we can all sleep. Tomorrow I'll start piecing together the next phase."

"Can we just sleep now?" Mack mumbled the words through his own arms, all but draped over his edge of the table.

"Hey, they pulled half an all-nighter just getting back home. We suffer together." She blew him a soft raspberry. "Get with the no-doze. So, Agent Morse. What'd you score?"

Bobbi shifted lazily in her seat, nudging the fairly thick manila folder closer to the center of the table. "Not a lot we didn't know, but some new wrinkles that make it so we didn't waste all our time. The Hand retreated slightly after the Fisk blowout but they never stay quiet for long. They smelled the power vacuum and moved back in, taking over the trade established by one Madame Gao. Yeah, the file on her is still thin. China trail is non-existent. The Hand mostly seem to be in it for money at the moment. If they get pushed out again, it's not a huge loss. Whatever happened at the docks has had some sort of lasting effect on the organization."

Coulson cut in. "Refresher on that for the team?"

Loki flicked his hand at a nod from Morse. "The Hand was moving in cargo in multiple stages, in concert with a land deal they were organizing. It's in the file, but my read is it was somehow geographically – metaphysically - important to them. I have no desire to speculate further without concrete details. Their brand of mysticism is quite unpleasant. This leads to the dock incident, with a singular cargo delivery that was disrupted. It is our understanding the cargo was destroyed in an altercation. The amount of chatter from the organization afterward indicated this was a cause for enormous upset."

"So they're licking wounds and toe-testing waters before making that move again." Mack was still mumbling through his arms.

"Just so." Loki looked to Morse, ceding the floor again.

"Mundane business is good, if embattled. File's got what I could recover of their motions. The club score was technically decent for that, we can pull some new outside names to watch over from here. When the local legend kicks ass, they retreat. Then push back. Seems to be some kind of bad blood there, something we're not getting details on. They do _not_ like that guy." She detailed a few more tidbits from that file, gesturing back at Loki. "So that was the primary stage. Secondary was Who's That Bachelor. Loki?"

"He's human. Not cybernetic, not one of our Kree-changelings, no immediate sense of him being unnaturally enhanced beyond truly unusual means. No extant mysticism, though by his fighting style and oppositional placement to The Hand I'd wager he's rather into meditation. He's in peak physical condition and his speed is, I do not say this lightly, remarkable." Loki paused. "That said, I would hesitate to classify him as 'normal.' There's something more there."

"Please don't drag it out, man. I wanna sleep so bad." Mack groaned into his arms.

"You don't want to work on Lola tonight?" The Director grinned at the back of his head.

"No, sir."

Loki watched the exchange with a slightly arched eyebrow. "His senses are beyond normal range. I'm unsure precisely how or why, but I did observe this: He's blind. He _sees_ , I think in some sense, but he is blind."

Daisy reared her head back. "Did we watch the same CCTV footage last month? Because that dude was a Flying Wallenda."

"And he's doing it using all his other senses. The mask he wears is visually impenetrable. Further, he knew something was different about me, and you do not easily mark that by sight alone." Loki raised a finger to mark his lecturing cadence. "He flashbanged me from a doorway. He moved from the door, but not to place himself out of sight of the effects – he kept range on me, but his placement meant he tried to muffle his hearing. Sight was not his first consideration, hearing _was._ I expect he noticed my heart rate was not in compliance with human expectation." He frowned. "Depending on the extent of his ability, he may have noticed my body temperature was unusual as well."

"That's kind of badass, actually." Daisy resettled her arms across herself. "Anything else you wanta toss in before we call it for the night?"

"He likely has some sort of information network, a way to access what he needs to successfully monitor his neighborhood. Certainly he _could_ be some dull suburban father." He smirked. "Regardless, the street is where I'd start putting a name to the mask. Social workers, emergency medical staff, public defenders, law enforcement. Anyone that can work the street despite what others will consider a disability. He's made of that an ability, but if he's smart – and I think he is – he'll play to expectations as his disguise."

"Cool beans. We'll toss the profile downstairs in the morning, see what rocks we can turn over." Daisy marked her end of the meeting with a final huge yawn. "Director?"

"I got nothing, kids. Go snooze."

. . .

Coulson grinned as most of Daisy's current operations team shambled out the door like a pack of auditions for a zombie movie. His left hand twitched despite trying to focus on his control over the new limb and he clenched it to get it back into line. The motion drew Loki's glance, the green eyes flickering over to look down at his hand and then up at his face. The alien was himself still nestling his chin on a fist, looking now somewhat drowsier himself in the wake of finished business. Coulson's face became serious. "Before you ask, we still haven't gotten a hit. I swear, we run the check twice daily. Have since you requested it."

Loki sighed. "I truly would have thought he'd turn up by now if for no other reason than to pester his lady love for horrible diner pizza or whatever it is they do." He shook his head. "And yet, nothing since the matter in Sokovia." His tone was carefully neutral, in the exact sort of way that told Coulson he was holding concerns.

Coulson knew what Stark had told him – the God of Thunder abruptly zooming back home for private reasons he hadn't shared with any Avenger. It was now several months later and still not a single earthly sign of Thor. Between that set of details and the later insistence by that bizarre _other_ Loki that something was brewing, his unlikely friend had been on the fringes of openly tense ever since. "Why don't you give in and just day trip over to Asgard to see what's got him so busy?"

His answer was a distinctly pained silence.

"Come on, Loki. Does it have to be like being a cat? God forbid you show the big blonde lunk you actually give half a crap."

The green gaze slid away. "I'm sure it's fine."

"Yeah, you sound it." Coulson watched the broad shoulders tighten in subtle defense. "Nine times out of ten when your instincts light up on you, you can't shut up about doom and gloom."

"Nine times out of ten, I'm right."

Coulson rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Well, ignoring the hunch doesn't change it. Just tells me the usual – you don't want to deal with Asgard."

"I'm uncomfortable returning without reason. The Nova Corp, very well. Debriefings with others in the alliances about current threats, certainly. Brokering your ridiculous vehicle upgrades with a homicidal wee mammal, why in Hel not?" Loki slumped back in his chair so that he could swivel and properly regard the Director. "Family matters? Why, yes, I would _love_ some broken glass in my mead goblet, thank you kindly. It'll be a little crunchy, but I can manage."

Coulson rolled his eyes again, this time in a mockery of Loki's dramatics. He rubbed at his forehead with his good hand, still 'feeling' the other one clench intermittently. The prosthetic was being a regular jackass. He made a mental note to go down in the morning and see if something was going screwy in the logic circuits. "They're still your family."

"And we are at peace, yes, with that peace at its best and most durable when I stay far away. I like that better." Loki paused, his face working at emotions that were still uncomfortable for him. Trusting those he could name _friends_ with private matters.

To his credit, Coulson stayed quiet while he compiled his next words. Finally Loki sighed. "I've fought and earned back some name and credit in the galaxy, and new tolerance amongst both the kingdom and family. I cannot reclaim full forgiveness nor trust. I cannot ask for either, and I cannot presume to seek them under the assumption that they can ever be found." He fell silent with a wince before eventually speaking again. "And knowing that there cannot be trust... it is difficult to be in a place where _mistrust_ is often complete and total. Even if I know my acts led to that state."

Loki looked away, still tight-faced. "In some ways, I'm still an echo, some uncomfortable ghost wrought after the breaking of the bridge. Unlike such specters, however, I no longer want to haunt the place where I died."

"That's super cheerful. You know, we have this thing on Earth called 'family counseling' that we could get all three of you in on." Coulson finished with an abruptly rumbling chuckle as he pictured that great and mighty old Odin sitting on a therapist's ratty corduroy couch, the golden spear of office denting the shag accent rug at his metal-booted feet.

The pinched, vaguely horrified expression on Loki's face said that he'd had nearly the same mental image. "That doomed, unlucky therapist."

"Have to charge by the minute, plus hazard rates. Pay up front for a full package of sessions, too."

An unwilling rattle of amusement started somewhere deep in Loki's throat and he casually slid his hand over his mouth to drown it. He shot Coulson a dirty look. "That isn't funny."

"Yeah, it is, and you know it." Coulson snorted. "Did you get the brief May told me she was sending over?"

The pale hand dropped with a light sigh. "This minor matter on the west coast, yes. I had the distinct impression she wanted it done sooner rather than later. If Miss Johnson-"

"God, that's still weird to get used to."

Loki waved off the muttered interruption, quickly thinking over an information job that required only some subtlety on his part. Some matter of some experimental chemical transfers, details on contraband shipping. Dire nonsense in the wake of a large company's demise. May's data indicated a lead on some of the stray treasure stolen in the chaos, and that lead went to, naturally, Hydra. The young world seemed busy working at the art of chaos. Well, he had the time. "If she has no immediate use for me in the morning, I'll fly out by noon and deal with Agent May's request. I doubt it will take longer than a day or so."

"And then maybe take a week and go talk to Pops and the brah, if nothing's shaken loose by then." Phil grinned like an idiot at the look he got.

"If you call the All-Father 'Pops' ever again in my hearing, not for his honor but my fragile sanity, I'll draft my resignation not a minute later."

"But 'Brah' is okay?"

"Not even remotely." Loki shoved himself back and out of his chair with deliberate force, scraping it against the tile hard enough to make Coulson wince. Petty, harmless revenge.

It didn't erase the grin on the human's face.


	3. The Rainy Season

3\. The Rainy Season

. . .

"I could lie and make you feel better, May. ' _Oh yes, all's well. There was a dreadful accident and a car full of Hydra refugees just happened to smash into a wall and wholly obliterate themselves and their prize.'_ But you'd grow angry if I tried. Instead, there's the unwelcome truth." Loki flickered his gaze up as he continued down the Seattle sidewalk, noting the various couples in their jackets and bundled umbrellas keeping an untrusting eye on the clouding sky and not on him. A folder rustled under his arm. "They drove up into the city less than three days ago, left without incident, and my information has them going further to Portland. From there, a tiny front company took them off the grid. I can go and see what I can chase down, but what paper trail I've found indicates I won't gain you much that way."

May's silence indicated that she was absorbing his sarcasm with the mild frustration he'd intended. _"Can't be helped, I'll let the appropriate people know. Any information on the front company?"_

He rustled around the pocket of the black pea coat he was wearing to retrieve a thin pair of dark gloves. He didn't need them for the damp chill beginning to fill the air; rather, he used them because it looked right. He resettled the folder under his arm, balancing the meager handful with the aimless grace of a businessman. Another pair of humans looked up at his tall figure passing by and then looked away. Just another ordinary if striking-looking person on the street. "Some pretend bioscience firm. They own a parcel of land with a building staffed by a skeleton crew, and more importantly, they hold a private section of the Portland airport. Mittelos Bioscience. Meaningless name. The trail snares up amidst a row of accountancy and legal paperwork, and then vanishes."

May made a noise that could have been profanity under her breath. _"Would have been easier if Pym wasn't so flaky about talking to SHIELD."_

"Such is the bitter past. On the bright side, I don't think this particular little set of snake heads is aware of our observation. That buys time." His lips pursed for a second as fat drops of rain began to plop onto the sidewalk ahead of him. The sounds of rattling umbrellas began to flicker up the street. "I've yet my return flight planned for the day after tomorrow. There's still a few details I can chase meanwhile."

 _"_ _It's something."_ She sounded grudging. _"See what you can scare up, but I've got my expectations set low."_ A pause filled the line as he arched an eyebrow at what could be an accidental insult. _"Not a personal remark. For what it's worth, if it were anyone else, I'd expect nothing and just pull them home. You at least have an eye for details we wouldn't get otherwise."_

The rain started to intensify, the plops giving way to a thinner but more rapid downpour. He brushed at the front of his coat with his gloves as other pedestrians started to give each other that _I know we're in Seattle but come the hell on_ look. "A random compliment!" His mocking cheer hid some slight actual surprise.

 _"_ _I'll deny it and perjure myself in a court of law. Happy hunting, Loki. Check in if something comes up."_

He shoved the phone in his pocket after ringing off, looking up at a grey sky growing darker as he watched. People began to hurry past him, muttering to each other in varying shades of affront-

 _"_ _Can you believe this?"_

 _"I thought this was the dry season!"_

 _"We don't have a dry season, but I thought maybe just one damn day-"_

 _"Oh my god, I left the car windows open."_

A streak of lightning cracked across the sky, sharp and brutal enough to make someone on the other side of the busy downtown street jump. Thunder followed close, with the rain beginning to pound as the roar of the sky began to roll towards the horizon. Loki stopped walking and ducked underneath a coffee shop's dripping awning, peering now instead of just glancing. He was unaware of how thinned his lips were.

A head popped out from the shop behind him, the tired-looking barista smelling of the day's special roast. "Where the hell is this coming from?"

He knew the answer to what was technically a rhetorical question, but didn't bother to say it. The kid made an irritated noise under his breath and went back in.

The phone began to buzz in his pocket to let him know he had a new message and he ignored it. He knew what that message was going to tell him. A young couple broke and ran as the thunder snapped again, transforming the heavy rain into a full storming downpour.

Loki waited patiently until he saw a tall, broad figure on the other side of the now empty sidewalk. Grimly amused, he noted the Asgardian's own somewhat less subtle attempt to blend in his appearance with the locals. He lifted his head, pitching his voice to carry its sardonicism properly. "And here I thought I was to be best known as the premier overly showy bastard of the Nine Realms. What excuse have you for this not particularly private display?"

"I thought to make sure my presence was marked by thee, brother."

"I have a phone. You can call. Hel, you can text." He pointed a finger at the sky. "This is a bit much."

As if duly chided, the rain lessened. Thor crossed the street towards him, not hurried and not particularly watchful of the large semi-truck idling at the intersection. The trucker leaned out into the damp to watch the giant blonde figure go by. "You are not surprised to see me, Loki?"

Loki sighed, studying the open, considering face of his glorious golden brother, doing his best to ignore the usual mix of chaos inside his own mind. A trickle of odd concern replaced his thoughts. He decided that was not exactly an upgrade. "I'm not, if for no other reason that now I can enjoy your surprise at my lack thereof." He jerked a thumb at the shop behind him, then followed it up by elbowing the door open. "Coffee. We can discuss such other surprises as what brings you to me – and why it is you look like a bedraggled track coach whenever you wear Midgardian clothing."

Thor tugged gently at the zippers of the wet cotton hoodie, looking dour at what was, in his experience, a relatively mild jape.

. . .

Now they drew looks – not so much the gorecrow brother whose pale face seemed to float above the black coat he wore, but the bright warrior who wore a fairly plain grey tunic and a warrior's leathers under the loose red jacket. Barely passable as human wear. Loki ignored the other patrons of the shop, studying Thor over a hot mug he held in both hands. A line of decorative mugs filled the wall behind the God of Thunder and his dripping hair, their floral riot of color adding a touch of the absurd. "Did that Jane never have a discussion with you about how to fit a pair of jeans? It isn't difficult. Well, to be fair, the human inability to find a cohesive sizing method adds a layer of complexity, but-"

"It was not a priority, Loki." It sounded like a pronouncement.

Loki tilted the mug in his hands, glancing down at the fading little leaf in the latte foam. Pointless, but pretty enough. Thor's seriousness created an edge in the air, attitude and nigh-formal arrival both. He found it unpleasant. "An opening offer of matched seriousness, then. I was not surprised, for I have been watching for your return to this realm."

He glanced up in time to see the brows crease under the long blonde hair. "You watched?"

"A few rumors, a few visions, a smattering of warnings. And now they come to pass, I think." The creases deepened on Thor's face. "Not to mention Stark thought to prod me with news of your abrupt departure. And did you find the threat you sought with that leaving?"

"I've looked, Loki, and I did not find. So I came here, instead." A mug of dark coffee sat in front of him, untouched. Thor sat with his hands on his thighs instead, studying his brother.

Loki let the study stand for a while, for once unsure he wished to break the growing silence. "What exactly were you trying to find, then? Don't draw this out, such play at conversation is my field, not yours. Stick the blade's tip and be done."

Thor broke his gaze and looked down at his drink, still disinterested in it. "The Maximoff girl was given a gift by the staff you brought to this realm. By the gem carried within it. And the girl could see nightmare and dream both and weight her prey with what she found – within these, sometimes, echoes of truth, future, and fear. Chaotic and unclear, but there is something to the images."

"The nature of that gem you know."

"I do. Stones of infinity itself, and that one given the territory of the mind." The blue eyes came back up. "I took the flicker of what she gave me to the pool of the Norns, what echoes remain of it here on Midgard. I have spent a great deal of time considering what I was shown."

"Prophecy is a bleak book of riddles, so our history proves out. The Norns can show you what might be, yes, but not necessarily what is true." Loki shook his head and put his coffee down. "That was risky of you. So, that is some of what you sought. What then did you see?"

Thor's voice was oddly flat. "Hel, Loki, unbound and come to Asgard to claim it full. Utter darkness sat upon the dimmed and shattered throne, and all I've known and loved gone mad in the chaos beyond the realm of Death, all I've met shrouded in the black robes of the lost."

Loki thought of a thin mirror, and a familiar snake's smile on the throne of another Asgard. "Did you see the nature of that darkness?"

"No, Loki. I hear the tone you hide – I saw you among the robed and damned, yes, but I could not hear you speak and you were not the throne's keeper. To my surprise as well. The shades that haunted that future Asgard were damned, but they might not have been condemned by your hand. This is a change. I think it all too possible that such a vision might have been a warning of your works."

A relief, and also no comfort. He picked up his mug again, looking into the steam still wicking off the drink's surface. "Had I held the throne myself this long, a possibility. Yes." He shook his head. "But on this road, no. You may know my motions as they are plain to be seen." He looked up. "So there's your riddle – a doom come to Asgard, and by a hand unknown." He allowed a thin smile. "For once."

His sour attempt at mirth didn't find a match. "I've searched for hints these months past. Looked into the heart of Asgard and across its spires to see the start of that black ruin, to avert it."

"And?" He leaned back as the frustration grew plain on Thor's face.

"Nothing. Nothing, Loki, just as I said. The sun shines bright and there has been a season of peace among our many realms. All is well, and there is no trace of corruption." The blue eyes met his and locked. In them, Loki saw the frustration turn darker. "The dreams are still there, the warning of doom haunts me. My heart knows the corruption lurks, despite what I cannot find. Something is gravely wrong in Asgard."

"And now you come to me, despite old wounds." He thought of May's odd compliment just shortly prior, and it occurred to him that of late he found it easier to understand that prophecies did not come from prophets alone. Instincts were the better fortune-teller, in his new experience. "What did you come here for? What did you think I can offer?"

Finally, Thor put a hand to the mug in front of him. He sniffed it, considered, and then lifted it for a testing sip. Loki had the confusing sense that speaking even this much of the God of Thunder's private burden eased it a little. "Come to Asgard. See if you can find what I cannot."

The chill returned to Loki's stomach. The old instincts, the old temptations were harder to lure away with his brother there. Bitterness came to his mouth, unbidden, leaping directly to the worst assumptions. "To spy for you, then, on the people and their lords to riddle out your mystery for you? Because there is a fallen brother to do such dirtier work while your hands remain clean?"

Thor's voice was sharp but not unkind, drawing a look from someone scrawling notes in a corner. "Because, _brother_ , there is a cleverness to you that is not mine. I have learned enough wisdom to know what is my strength and what is another's, and my wisdom says _go, his eyes are better than yours._ It has always been so, even in the better times."

Loki looked away.

"You have your duty here, and you keep to it. This is known. Your reasons are not my business. But where I've found a place to strike my hammer, you found a different way to sharpen the knife. I will not toss that knife aside." Another testing sip. Thor put the mug down. "Again we come to the nexus. Help me."

He had no answer for that.

"What did you expect a meeting between us would be?"

 _Mistrust. The slow trickle of bile. Eventually the common rage we fall into in almost every encounter. The old sins come back to roost._ The warnings of the God of Stories trickled through his thoughts. "I don't know."

"Not your vilest lie." The words were gentle, but got a hot stare for a response. "If Ragnarok is come 'round for us, it comes like a thief and not heralded by the warrior's horn. I cannot stop nor face it alone, not if it creeps so."

"And if I say no?" _You're going to need each other,_ said that other Loki _._ His fingers tightened around the handle of the mug. Nothing about this was as he'd expected, nor so soon. He'd wanted to prepare more. See things at his own pace. There was a great storm swirling in his mind, but little of it could be shaped by words. Not yet. "This is not a matter of old times."

"Those are gone, Loki. These are new times, changed times, and I am frightened they are also short times."

The fear in the great warrior was real, a thing he could sense in the air. Loki let go of the mug's grip and rubbed two fingers across his brow. He could feel Thor studying him as he thought. "I will not skulk for you." He took the hand from his face to spread it, stopping the protest. "If I come to Asgard, it is by day and by my own name."

"And you will accomplish what by that means?"

"A first look and a little more besides, I think. The wiser spy knows when to be seen and when not. Subterfuge isn't always the first step." He looked up, feeling somehow weary. "Don't trust me. That tends to be unwise for you, and I did not expect you would ever come willingly to a door with me behind it again. But let me work my way, and we'll see what comes of it."

Thor stared, then allowed a slight nod. Something in his face eased and he returned to his drink. "Then you will come to Asgard this day?"

"No." Loki nudged the folder on the small tabletop with his elbow. "Soon. A smaller matter, for the sake of the humans. It might draw an unwanted eye, should I drop everything and return with you."

Thor blinked, understanding. "Soon, then, brother. I will go ahead and make what preparations I can."

 _Brother._ Loki didn't look up when the golden prince rose to leave. He closed his eyes when the broad hand touched his shoulder.

The rest of his coffee was cold.


	4. Wagnerian Opera

(Apologies this did not go up yesterday in concert with the AO3 update, but if you know what 's been like, you know why. :P)

4\. Wagnerian Opera

. . .

Daisy swung back and forth in the tall swivel chair Loki kept by his desk, using her socked toes to control her motion. "I realize I'm gonna sound like a nervy den mom to someone who's pretty much older than everyone on this floor combined, but are you really gonna be okay going to Asgard right now? Like, I know Phil's been on you to visit mostly because he secretly likes watching drama _almost_ as much as either of us, but now it's kind of weird and tense because Thor was all freaked according to you."

"I've observed you for months now and I'm still not certain you breathe, much less pause, when you talk." Loki tossed the tablet he was finished working with onto the desktop next to her, more than a little aggravated by the worried looks and the rapid-fire conversation she'd been using to lead up to her question.

"I asked you a question." She rolled her eyes at his expression. "Come on, Captain Dodgeball. Answer me."

"Asgard is a den of brusque warriors, bound by arcane laws of honor and the weight of thousands of years of history. Many of them are brash, proud, easily angered, and I have never been and am still not well-loved there. I spent centuries of life among them, and have been the source of many betrayals. Most of which are rather well remembered." His nostrils flared, considering. "I'm sure I'll be fine. It will be like visiting numerous Earthly countries – don't drink the water, and never leave your valuables unattended. This naturally includes my personal vital organs."

Her face pinched. His aggravation with her faded in favor of sour amusement. "You act as if I don't have to go back every few months to reassure the Corp I haven't done something else monstrous lately."

"Yeah, well." Daisy shrugged. "It's the Ragnarok thing."

He stopped himself from rolling his eyes. Not very well, but he tried. "Save me from your half-readings of a barely relevant mythology. First it was the horse. Then it was some bizarre matter of a goat. And then, what was that? Something about a squirrel? Good Gods, please stop. Please. I don't make up wild tales about _your_ childhood and pretend it's a religion."

"No, come on." She brought up both her hands to wave them at him. "Okay, it's not some wikipedia thing. Look, almost every kid watches some cartoons growing up, and for a long time it was the Looney Tunes."

Loki sat down heavily on the dark green couch, already rubbing the side of his face with vicious intensity.

"So there's this one short where it's like an opera and they're singing _Kill the Wabbit_ and there's a bunch of visual jokes about opera itself and the characters and like everyone remembers this thing. Because the rabbit dies for a little bit, you know? That was harsh for a kid. Also, it's one of the best cartoons of all time. And we grow up and we find out that's based on this real musical piece from something called the _Gotterdamerung."_

" _Die Walkure_. You're referring to the last portion, Daisy. The piece you're thinking of – The Ride of the Valkyries – it's from the second opera. _The Ring of the Nibelung_ is the overall work." The words were muffled behind his hand. He vaguely recalled the cartoon in question, glimpses of it at some point during his earthly stays. The opera itself was noisy and overly grandiose. He'd decided he preferred the Italian version of the art in general, and a good nap over all of it.

 _"_ _Whatever._ Schools sometimes get into it to get kids interested. So the whole cycle of music ultimately ends with the gods getting set on fire. Like the whole opera is this big mythic thing that's kind of weird, but then you hear about the Norse Edda stuff that it's based on and it's sad. The last bit of the opera is literally 'The Twilight of the Gods.' Ragnarok is when you guys _die_."

He let go of his face to regard her absurdly worried expression. "It isn't supposed to be sad, it's supposed to intimate a cycle of renewal. It's a story. I also vaguely appreciate that you didn't jump to the fact that in the _story,_ most of the nonsense seems to wind up being my fault." He glanced up at the ceiling. "Can't imagine how that happened. Your twelfth and eleventh centuries were a little busy."

She ignored his black humor, still visibly upset. "Yeah, okay, but you guys _do_ have this same word. And there's other stuff that parallels the mythology we know, obviously. So what _is_ Ragnarok to you guys?"

"A vague prophecy, based on legends and distantly remembered history. It's really not any clearer than that Edda's version." He shrugged. "My relationship with the concepts of fate and prophecy has... wobbled somewhat, so take what I say with a certain bias in mind. Regardless, the prophecy suggests that what has happened has happened before, and may yet happen again and we are to never to understand why. All is to be buried in earth and water in the time after great war, after which the land is reborn anew and we get to go through this nonsense as if it were the first time. First our forefathers and then us again, the theoretical last ruling house of Asgard. There is only the chain of destiny. Depending on your interpretations."

Daisy started swiveling the chair again. "So, like _The Dark Tower._ Ka is a wheel."

"Right down to the presence of a horn, curiously enough, though again that's where the story and reality blends. Heimdall carries it sometimes as one of his tools of office. The Gjallerhorn. It sounds certain warnings throughout Asgard and when we are in our warring years it's about as common and worrisome as your weekly tests of the emergency broadcast system. Toot-toot, barbarians at the gate. Must be sunrise."

She watched him rubber-face his way through the most mocking bits. "So why's Thor worked up if the story isn't as big of a deal as we think?"

He leaned back into the couch, considering the breadth of the answer. To be truthful, it was more complex than he was making it sound. He frowned, trying to find a way to put it. "For one thing, do bear in mind I can still take a certain delight in his discomfort even if I admit that he has some right to it. When you were growing up, you were fed tales of beasts in your closet and under the bed, yes?"

"The Toe-Biter is the most serious of threats, dude." Her face was sincere under the shorter crop of hair she'd taken to of late.

"And now that you are an adult, by your tone, you know those monsters are only a story born of such things as a well-meaning attempt to keep a child from a-wandering at night." She nodded. "Dangle your foot over the edge of the bed much these days?"

"Not a chance. Even if it's super hot out, I gotta keep the edge of the blanket on my legs." She stopped swiveling to think it over. "But I still know there's nothing under the bed."

"And yet, monsters and magic exist. There is _doubt._ The galaxy has widened for your young race, and now you know there _are_ hungry things in the dark." He smiled wryly. "You learn to hedge your bets, to carefully whistle past the grave. Because certainly they are stories and nonsense – and yet there is just enough bone in them to wonder. The warriors fret the most at the story of Ragnarok. They do not fear dying in battle – that's the entire point of 'glorious war' for many of them. They fear dying futilely. And what is more futile than an existence where we are fated to repeat both our victories _and_ our failures for all eternity? Where is the meaning in that?"

She poked at the base of the chair with her toes. "You said there was some blend of history to this thing. So it's got those bones."

Loki spread his hands. "Asgardians live long lives, full of much that becomes some mixture of truth and legend. Repeat this for generations – as Thor is the Odinson, so Odin is the Borson, Bor's father Buri built no few stories for himself and told the tales of _his_ kinsmen... that's almost fifteen, twenty thousand years of fading memory alone and that's what we'd call relatively recent. History becomes flexible."

"Swear to God I thought the All-Father guy just sprung out of nowhere, fully formed or something. Hard to picture him as a kid."

"Isn't it?" Loki grinned. "And yet the watchers of the Nine Realms are not the oldest known race. There is much that came before – some of it known, some of it unknown, left to riddles and secrecy. I'll tell you one thing I've known that is cause for some of the story's mystique... The people you know as Asgardians, them Aesir, _they_ did not build the palace of great golden Asgard." He arched an eyebrow at her nonplussed expression. "They took it for their own. More than that, I do not know. Was it retrieved at the start of one of these unbroken cycles, by such reborn families fated to wheel's spoke, or was it merely some spoil of a war whose songs are lost and unsung?"

"Do _you_ buy any of it?"

"I think of the prophecy as somewhat arrogant of late, in that it presumes a cycle and disaster so profound that it does not merely strike down one race, but takes the realms and more down with it. A singular race so important that when they go, the galaxy and possibly the universe entire hits a restart." Loki snorted. "What do they think they are, humans?"

" _Sass."_ Daisy giggled, beginning to relax.

"Tell me the theory you people had again, the one where the Sun orbits this planet. Good for a laugh every time." He brought his hands together in a clap. "Anyway. I consider this worry about Ragnarok to be a kind of shorthand; that Thor fears a great doom coming to the realms akin to the twilight of legend. I understand this. Not only does it dovetail with certain of my concerns, but I was raised as he was – that Fate and Destiny are tight chains upon us, and not easily broken. I have, with certain recent experience, come to believe otherwise. A cycle _can_ be broken, and I refuse to lead the winter wolf to Asgard's door. I do not hold to the prophecy any longer and name it story instead. But I understand its relevancy to a warrior's daylight fears. Its symbols and its weight. That has meaning. The cycle is worth considering, whatever I feel."

She studied his face, the calm, bland expression providing more answers to how he felt. "You're pretty worried about the Thanos-guy, though, we wanna talk apocalypse."

"Point. But that is a titanic warlord seeking immense power, not the literal incarnation of Jormungand come to Asgard. It doesn't presume a center. When all is said and done and if we've survived, I suppose it's likely we could force the prophecy to fit his threat, but that is not how critical thinking is supposed to work. Let us deal with Thor's specific concerns now, and let prophecy alone till it's actually relevant."

"Okay." Daisy reached to her side and grabbed the tablet he'd discarded earlier. "This your last report on Seattle?" She looked up to catch his nod. "I hate it when things slip through the net."

"They were efficient. I suppose we're fortunate they were not allied with Latveria in this matter. The tech that survived the Cross incident might have been of potential interest to that strange king."

"Thank God _that_ guy's been quiet for a bit." She sighed. "Crazy to think so much of this Hydra crap is _still_ having repercussions. You know, the stuff about monsters under the bed? I worry a lot more about the ones that are just walking up and down the hall with us and maybe inside us, and we don't know. We can't know, till they bite."

Loki gave the young woman a long, wry smile. "Tell _me._ "

She sighed again, always aware of the edge in his self-deprecation. "Which isn't to say literal monsters and stuff, dude. It's just hard to find so much darkness in people sometimes. I don't know. There's a big hole here and I dug around enough. Just be careful out there, alright?"

He was still smiling slightly at her, not quite at the border of patronizing but somewhere on the same continent.

She ignored the look, knowing what it really meant. "You got a way to contact us if crap gets real?"

"Yes, so that a parcel of fragile humans can come rescue the thousand year old beleaguered sorcerer from whatever great galactic doom he's found for himself," he drawled. "Or possibly getting beaten up in a mead hall by warriors twice my size and strength, I'm sure a taser will work marvelously in that scenario. Actually, now that I think of it, if something like that happens... find and bribe Banner. Stark might do it just for the laugh."

"You're being sarcastic but can we just remember what the last year has been like? Contact number or whatever, did you leave one?"

" _Yes,_ Miss Johnson. I have already discussed this at great length with Coulson. A method of communication has been arranged. I do not intend to leave you lot in the dark." The expression on his face softened into something almost sad. "Your concern is noted. For what it's worth, there were years where Thor and I handled disastrous situations with similar distressing regularity as this duty here, and yet here I sit. Alive enough, after a fashion."

Daisy got out of his chair, the tablet still in her hands to take down to May. She tapped it against her fingertips, considering and then finally deciding against hugging him as if he were any other central agent she worked with. He still got pretty weird about things like his personal space. So she bopped him on the arm with the tablet instead, getting another wry smile for effort. "Alright, dude. Talk to you soon."

"Thank you, Miss Johnson." The brisk formality in his voice was an obvious mask, one intended for her to see through. He was touched. "Soon."


	5. Raven's Watch

5\. Raven's Watch

. . .

Thor barely glanced down as he gently swung his hand to shoo away the cawing ravens from where they perched atop a stone wall. Both Hugin and Munin were in rare form of late, Odin's twin heralds preferring to idle away the easy days by singing their black-feathered hearts out in discordant croaking yowls. When he was yet a small boy, he had asked his mother with high-voiced earnestness why great father Odin didn't just get a puppy instead of keeping the sour-natured bastards. Sweet Frigga had laughed and laughed and didn't bother to give him a real answer.

And for centuries, the enormous ravens cawed at will. The one thing Thor was fairly sure he yet and forever shared with his blacker brother – neither of them cared much for the damned birds. But they both kept their mouths carefully shut on the topic. After all, he'd eventually figured out for himself, together they were Odin's other eye.

Taking a cue from Thor's mood, the birds fluttered off. Heimdall watched them go with his far-seeing eyes crinkled in amusement. He resettled himself where he stood, hands firmly clasped above his sword near the gate of the palace. Technically he was off duty. Realistically, all knew he considered himself forever at his work and so his voice was low and sober. "You do not need a formal herald for your arrival, my prince. Odin now knows you've come home again for the eve."

"And what else does he know of late?" Thor studied Asgard's first and greatest guardian in his great golden armor. The aleph, with his eyes made of stars.

"That the other is here as well." Heimdall kept his strong, dark face neutral. "He cares little of that fact – no trouble has come and peace remains a new king in the realm. So long as that peace yet reigns, Loki may walk untethered."

"You care, Heimdall." There was weight behind the statement. Neither forgot Loki's crimes against the watchman – the ice, the prison, and the betrayals when the stolen throne was torn free again. Loki would have arrived through the Bifrost this time as was still his right, no doubt unusually careful to avoid an incident between the pair. Thor could smell the chill of that passage on the man's gleaming armor.

"I always care, mighty Thor. It is my nature and my duty to care." Still neutral. "Odin does not know the answer of how Loki comes to walk the city again, does not know that you asked him to do this thing as I watched over you both."

"And will you tell him?"

"If he asks." Heimdall allowed one of his slight smiles at the cloud on Thor's face. "But such a question would have to be quite precise to gain a full answer. I see so much across all our realms, of course. I cannot hardly fret at every detail. I must trust in my king, and my prince as well."

Thor noted the singular and swiftly chose to let it go without comment. "My friends?"

"Long since arrived as well." Now the slight smile permitted the whisper of a chuckle. "They are in the hall closest to the kitchens."

Thor answered the rare sound with a knowing grin. "Volstagg."

"'Twas a series of fresh caught boars they followed to the castle gates. The outcome was known well before the meal's preparation began in earnest. If you hurry... perhaps they have saved the castle's young lord a hock or two. Perhaps."

. . .

No one looked at Loki with his mild face and plain tunic in the lee of the weaver's pavilion, why would they? The weaver's wares shone too brightly in the Asgardian day, with panels of jewel-braid blue silks and perfect pale linens fighting for a wanderer's eye instead. The fabric walls of the shop itself were a thousand shades of the city's well-known gold, each one priceless. The crisp smells of perfumed dyes filled the air, rich musks hiding the harsher shades the warriors favored and countless other blends floated on the clean breeze for almost any other purpose imaginable. He remembered the place well enough, kept busy for centuries in the hands of an artisan who hand-made dozens of cloaks and tunics for a pair of young princes obligated to show up at important matters only adults cared for. Long hours of fidgeting while measurements were deftly made. And the bribes, of course, treats and the chance at future treasures offered by a frustrated queen to keep both boys in line. Sometimes the bribery even worked.

That was a long time ago, and so Loki did not allow himself to dwell on the memories overmuch. Instead, hidden by the ordinary bustle of the wide city thoroughfare, he read what the unhurried crowds had to tell him.

The mead hall maids spoke of bored warriors, carousing in the long summer with no enemy to slay. The threats of the outer galaxy were not yet real and present for these mighty, and Asgard's old enemies were set aside for a season of peace. They grumbled, but they obeyed. And drank. And irritated the hall maidens, after a while.

The carpenters spoke of fine fields of trees from the outskirts of Asgard and all through Vanaheim, grown strong and full. They spoke robustly of future projects, new halls (and hall repairs, due to those bored warriors) and monuments, blessed is the All-Father's wisdom and guidance.

The butchers and the brewers and the cheesemakers, and the deft-handed dwarves, all foretold a decade's worth of bounty to come.

So it went, from avenue to alley, his ears picking out whispers and idle gossip. The streets told him only those tales that were nigh-idyllic. Frankly, Loki decided, the optimism bordered on dull. A kingdom without strife would eventually be hard tempted to create its own. Growth could not come from stagnancy, and Asgard was seldom prone to such years of quiet. Perhaps that was what Thor sensed; rare emptiness looking for trouble.

He couldn't dismiss the prince's fears quite so easily. _There's dark times coming,_ another Loki had told him not so long ago, the young voice grim and heavy with personal knowledge. And Ragnarok – that one had referenced the legendary cycle as well. He kept wandering up the streets of a small world that he had once called home, catching only a few stray curious glances now and again from a people that mostly recalled a distant black profile on a balcony amongst other and better known royal profiles.

There was some stray comfort in that anonymity, and so he stayed away from the halls where they might remember old revels with the Odinson and his kith and kin a little better.

. . .

Volstagg looked up first at Thor's arrival in the hall, at first with eyes wide and then his stance immediately relaxing as he approached. He did not say, but Thor saw plain the answered question. The arrival of one prince alone had been the broad warrior's hopes. Again as ever, Thor could not blame his friend and companion for his concern, and yet there were still the old griefs sharpening in his heart to see it. Nothing would ever be as it once was in Asgard.

Sif saw something in his face at the greeting and favored him with a welcoming smile to try and put him at some ease. "Welcome home, good Thor. And fear not, Volstagg has been duly restrained from the fullness of his hungry vigor."

Hogun looked up from a bowl of untouched soup to allow one of his spartan pronouncements. "We asked him to wait." He looked down again, picking up a crust of fresh bread.

"They asked nicely." Volstagg put a broad arm out to finish his greeting, pulling Thor in for a strong hug. "I am not so crude as to sup without my war-brother in attendance."

"Usually," added Fandral. He toyed with the tip of a thin blade before putting it away again. He waved at the open space on the bench. A speck of rudeness in the flash of a weapon in Asgard's heart, but perhaps Fandral had intended an opinion to match Volstagg's.

Thor sighed and with new diplomacy let all that go as well. He was not in the mood to fight on the behalf of a man who would likely be forever bemused by his attempt to do so. The red girl's dreams still rested heavy in his mind and he barely noticed as one of the palace staff placed a mug by his hand as he sat, already full with rich warm mead. "What news of the realm do you carry?"

"I could get a lovely job in the fields of far Vanaheim. The coming harvest will be grand without the marauder plague and they're like as not about to drown in an embarrassment of wheaty riches." Fandral's voice was light. "Volstagg is considering taking a course on financing."

"I am _not_ ," came the offended rumble. Volstagg thumped his form onto another bench, highlighting his irritation with the tug of a thick metal plate. Hogun put a hand on his mug to keep its full contents from sloshing.

"It's a joke, Volstagg. Nothing more." Fandral rolled his eyes over to him, then looked to Lady Sif. "At least you have the option of some busywork on Midgard, should you care for it. Of course, your choice of compatriots..."

Volstagg thumped the table again at what was unsaid as Sif's expression remained neutral. "The son of Coul is a fair and wise lord, whose work amidst his own domain is trying enough. While I _could_ help further, he seems to have matters well in hand." She then smiled fully into Fandral's face. "For he has those willing and capable to help him at need, not unlike we warriors."

Thor froze with the mug in his hand. He had not seen _that_ warning shot coming. His brow furrowed. "If we are going to snipe around the edges of my brother's presence, do it openly. If you don't care to do it openly, then silence it." He softened the pronouncement with a gentle nod to Sif, in a way thanking her. "Not every meal needs to devolve into this sort of furor. The mistrust is well noted." Now his voice became firm. To Hel with diplomacy. "Loki is here in Asgard at my request. _Deal with it._ "

"Well, at least he didn't come to sup," muttered Volstagg, not quite under his breath.

Thor gave him a warm smile. "I intend to ask tomorrow. I give you a night to adapt to this possibility."

Hogun dipped his bread into his soup, chewing heartily at the crust of it in the silence that met Thor's warning. When he was done, he looked around the table until the rest looked back at him expectantly. Finally he rested his gaze on Fandral and his look of contemplation towards Thor. "Take the field duty."

Fandral reared his sleek head back. "Whatever for?"

"You might learn to properly cut."

At first unwilling and nearly choking on a thick slice of boar, Volstagg began to roar laughter. It drowned out the additional merriment from around the table.

. . .

One of the ravens betrayed itself with a caw. Loki glanced up just before passing underneath a wide bridge, catching sight of one of the flying noisemakers before it took off again into the approaching night. Not truly spying, he supposed, just one of the All-Father's casual observances of the people that were his charge. Odin's idea of spying probably would have involved an inexplicable increase in the number of armored guards on the street, and he had not observed that in play. So long as everyone behaved, there was no need to fret at his motions.

He would bet all he still owned that Heimdall had been advised to keep a regular eye on him. The cold, knowing stare he'd received upon arrival was enough proof of that. Of no concern. _Behaving_ was simple enough, at least for now. But with only a scant few hours of city observances to feed on, Loki already found traces of Thor's frustration within himself. He had trouble identifying why at first – certainly the bucolic pleasantry of the city was marked plain to be seen. The rest of it made him pause there in the brief gloom of the underbridge as he realized it full.

Asgard moved slow, for what need was there to hurry when they had thousands of years to live and breathe and create? The throng of the streets was a calm pressure, a steady glacial flow that took its pleasure in wandering. People took their time with conversation; certain topics taking weeks to get back to unless there was something needful to it. Meals had always been lazy affairs, even in wartime. The great feasts could last months, even years.

Meanwhile, in comparison, there stood Midgard and its need to rush. Brief, urgent lives that knew their own briefness, flickering along the surface of their world to consume as much experience as they could before fading out. Sometimes they missed important things this way, but still. It was an important difference, one he hadn't realized he'd at least come to accept even if he was not yet used to it.

Loki stayed still under the bridge for a while as carts rattled by, considering this and coming to no easy conclusion about which life was better. Once it would have been a simple answer, one couched in a different understanding of the value of time. Then he moved on, leaving that speculation behind.

For him, he decided, the answer was closer to the middle. He would not take years to sort out Thor's questions, not when that would cost others. In his pocket was an unusual crystalline object; a mating of technology and magic. With it, he could communicate imperfectly with those back on that young world – a matter of message delay, something closer to archaic voicemails. Given time, he and Fitz, that young engineer, could have done better. _Time._

Thor had never frightened easily. If there _was_ something awry well hidden in the city's shadow, it would be best found quick, while that time was still on their side.

. . .

Odin gently rubbed the beak of the now gentle and quiet Thought – Hugin – and contemplated both princes of Asgard and their places. Once there was a balance between the pair, something that could have led to a new future for the realm. But, he considered with the old weariness, that balance was forever broken. Peace now, and at what cost?

"I cannot be king and All-Father forever," he muttered to the attentive bird, finishing with a little tap just below the dip of its beak. "Yet I have one son who wants no throne, and a damaged prince who can never claim it."

 _"_ _Caw."_

He arched a thick white brow at the meaningless response, pulling away his hands to clasp them within the comfortably thick linen robe he wore instead of grandiose armor. "So where does that leave the kingdom's future when I am gone?"

The raven didn't bother to reply to the rhetorical. The All-Father turned away from the balcony and looked within the darkened chambers. They were forever cold and empty now, the heavy curtains drawn shut to hide the crime that occurred within. A blessing that her blood was gone from its stones, but still his eye was drawn to where his queen once lay. As if the shadow of that stain was still there.

The raven fluttered off, leaving him in the silence of the queen's normally sealed chamber. This was where he came to contemplate now, alone with the past and even the ravens allowed only a glimpse of the secrets here. He lifted his head to behold her, his face old and weary and still torn by grief. "Were you alive, what would you have me do?"

And in the silence, that beautiful old ghost limned with the light of Valhalla stretched her hand to him. Still, like many nights before, she gave him no answer. This was not a night she would give him guidance.

He did not reach out to touch her slim fingers, but in the spreading twilight, his cheek under that one far-seeing eye gleamed wet.


	6. Sweet Valhalla

6\. Sweet Valhalla

. . .

Loki passed the crystalline device between his palms, noting the glimmering little flicker that told him the humans had successfully tested the thing – or more precisely, his unlikely friends had chosen to leave him some sort of message. He still found that remarkable, that his companions might care about what occurred in Asgard. If ever there were a circumstance that should be _his_ problem alone, this was it. And yet, they not only cared, they still actively attempted to involve themselves and welcomed his careful discussion of the matter. Coulson in particular had been steadfast since... well. He barely knew anymore.

Humans were _odd._

He passed his thumb across a particular fragment of the device, turning it over in his hands to enjoy the flash of the morning sun across the facets. From somewhere close by, he heard the clear voice of Coulson. He immediately rolled his eyes at the sound, not out of implied cruelty but due to some sort of curse the man seemed to bear when it came to new technology. _"_ _-s this working? Fitz?"_

Muffled and the tiniest bit exasperated: _"_ _Think so, sir."_

 _"_ _Is it recording?"_

 _"_ _Has been, actually."_

A rustle of sound, followed by a quickly muttered selection of profanity. Loki started to slowly shake his head. _"_ _Hey, ignore the early part. Can I eras- forget it. Decided to check in and see if this thing actually worked. Oh – downstairs has a list of possibles on the Hell's Kitchen guy, most of whom match up with your profile workup. We're gonna let that simmer for a while before chasing them down; the neighborhood's not in bad shape otherwise and Tsurayaba was still the main situation anyway. Did get a rumor there's even more people interested in that part of the city. Mercs, maybe another vigilante. Something to watch."_

Loki resettled against the outcropping of mossy stone, looking out along the surface of the unnatural lake that surrounded the central city of Asgard. He hadn't fully understood why his feet took him here, so far away from the busy streets. He didn't want to think about it. He was carefully not examining his own memories, not yet. The distraction of Coulson's voice was preferable, and he let the man continue to ramble through the air next to his ear.

 _"_ _Daisy wanted to be sure this thing worked. She had this weird conversation with me about German opera, I'm going to assume that's your fault somehow."_

He snorted loud enough to startle a small bird from its nest inside an old stone carving.

 _"_ _Anyway, do me a favor and send a message back when you can. I don't care what. I'll tell her you're spacediving with Knowhere pirates for giggles if it comes to it, just to get her off my case."_

He sighed and thumbed the crystal again when the muttering voice faded out, collecting his thoughts before changing its settings. "There is nothing here to report. Asgard is being remarkably boring. We lack onesie-clad vigilantes by nature, although I must admit after an eyeful of your ren faires and obsession with fantasy novels that any Asgardian's typical appearance has to be good for a laugh." He paused the recording for a consideration, his control of the makeshift device already deft. His next words came in a sardonic drawl. "I am not in dread danger. I haven't hardly seen the castle yet, no opportunity to slip me poison is thus available. I realize this is certain cold comfort – for myself in particular. If something changes, I will attempt to message. Tell Miss Johnson whatever you like, but if you lie, make it a good one for my sake."

The message was sent a moment later, the crystal pocketed away again within the layers of the fine green and black tunic he wore. Now his head lifted to see the far structure of fine stone and marble; the walls of an artificial river used only to carry funereal boats to the surface of the constructed lake. His face tightened and smoothed over into a blank mask as he picked a private route down to the water's edge, skipping the tall stairs in favor of quieter grass and eventual gleaming sand.

. . .

This close to the lake's edge, the stars could begin to peek through the controlled atmosphere of Asgard. While they would be far from their brightest until many hours from now, he could still see the constellations he knew and grew up with. Less clear were the beautiful wisps of nebula that could be best viewed from these shores in the clear night – the skirts of sweet Valhalla, said some of the old poets. That was where the stars drifted up to their final rest. The beloved dead, to wait for the living to come home.

Loki was now unaware of how frozen his face was, nor how tightly his hands were clenched. Behind his teeth was an old, buried bitterness now come to lick his tongue with its fire, and his eyes closed to try and imagine what it had been like. Her funeral. The countless boats drifting towards the edge of the world, the remnants of heartbreak in the wake of the Dark Elves' assault. An assault that, despite Odin's curious moment of forgiveness in the shadow of an even greater sin, he still carried within himself.

His eyes, still dry, opened wide when a sound of disturbed stone and pebble carried to him. He turned slightly, catching a whisper of red fabric out of the corner of his eye. He kept his voice neutral and deathly calm. "Now is not the best of times."

Thor was silent behind him at first, the only sound that of the big warrior finding a broad rock to settle himself against. "I thought you might come close to the water. I guessed wrong at first, looked further up the shore and found only children playing with skipping stones."

He absorbed that, nettled that Thor thought to seek him at the shore when at first he himself hadn't realized why he took this path, then chose another dodging angle. "I've found nothing yet, only the peace that disturbs you so much." The words were still heavy in his mouth. "I can compare notes with you if you wish – _later._ "

Another of Thor's odd new silences fell heavy over them both for a long minute. "You still hold a great anger here."

An apt and succinct human phrase flew to his lips well ahead of more learned speech – _No shit_. He bared his teeth at the surface of the water, remembering the way his barely controlled rage and grief could flicker along his form and lash out. He chose deliberately to say nothing. Then the words poured out of him in a betrayal of their own. "I should have been there. Been permitted to see my own mother off, whatever Odin decreed in his fury. Instead I find out by the lips of some random guard in the hours after her boat is set adrift. Not even until she has been gone for days do I see _you,_ and then to beg my help for vengeance." Loki tried to bite the words off but a few still struggled past his teeth. "At least you might have _tried_ to let me attend."

The water licked at the edge of the sand. A star flared a little against the veil of the day, then dimmed again.

"Yes, Thor, I was angry about that. I'm _still_ angry."

"And so you stay away. One of many reasons, no doubt." The words hung amidst the trickle of water and the rustle of wind. Loki didn't respond to them. "You understand why no one came to your cell until I crept close, of course."

"I do." His face creased, sharpest at the lips and the corners of the eyes. "I might have begun my betrayals at the funeral. And I might not have, knowing we both what she meant to me. But you only came when she was gone. By then, what else did I have but vengeance? Nothing left but that, and so you used it. Perhaps I cannot fault that... but I _can_ be angry."

"Is that still true? That all you have left to you are the weapons of anger and vengeance?" Thor asked the question carefully.

It was his turn to offer only silence. It wasn't true – but what he had now was _his._ What few scraps of life he'd rebuilt since leaving Asgard. He felt a need to keep them sheltered close. "I have a right to my anger, even if I'm capable of understanding the reasons why I was left angry. For all my crimes, that mercy... it may have changed things sooner."

"And it might not have. You see my fears. I cannot dismiss them so simply, even if I want to."

He let his breath out in an achingly heavy sigh.

"Loki. I'm sorry."

In their simplicity, the words sounded utterly sincere. He found that hurt to hear, part of him wanting to reject them. "Leave me be for a while. I would yet have preferred you did not approach me here nor now. This was not a conversation I wanted." Loki shook his head, ignoring these new pains as best he could. "I came at your bidding, and not to dredge the past."

"Do you hear that I think it may have been a necessary conversation, one not meant to be had in Midgard's air?"

"Only if you've _listened_ , since I think there's precious little of that skill in the royal house of Asgard." His voice was grudging.

He could hear Thor's dry snort behind him, followed by the scrape of armor as he rose back to his feet. "I've heard you. There is still anger, but that you acknowledge it... there was a time you would not have spoken. Let it hide and fester, and not let it be drawn into the day to be tamed. Like my old arrogances and mistakes."

Again he half turned, not fully willing to look at his distant brother. "Isn't that something," he murmured, still hearing that careful sincerity. Then the next chilly shock.

"Come to dinner tonight. In the palace, amidst family."

 _And here I've only just reassured Coulson that I was not about to be poisoned._ He chose against saying that aloud. "Not entirely certain that's wise. At the moment I have a perfectly nice nook in the city, where I can observe without being observed myself." Against his intentions, his words finished with a trace of doubt. He _would_ have to attend the palace at some point. It would be politically rude to avoid the All-Father for too long, an imbalance he would prefer to avoid. And there were always secrets in the palace to examine, things servants said or saw that men like Thor would never notice. It was as much a necessity to this cause as the streets, despite his comforts.

Still. One of those agonizingly slow Asgardian meals, being carefully examined by Odin and the Einherjar. Worse, Thor's friends would possibly be in attendance. He sneered again at the water, defensive.

Thor's words matched his thoughts, the rumbling voice touched with dry humor. "It would upset Volstagg. That has to be worth a laugh. Come, Loki, what is there to fear from a palace plate?"

He turned to give his brother a long, cool look. "Can I just say that at this point in my life I'd prefer a gas station hot dog to that torment? They might be safer."

"A-" The bafflement was total.

"Trust me, they're awful. I have stories. Not _good_ stories, mind."

Thor blinked at him. "You still hide yourself in bitter wit."

"I didn't change _everything_ overnight," he drawled, aware that his self-deprecation was becoming more obvious. A ridiculous idea occurred to him, one outrageous enough that it wouldn't possibly fly. And yet.

And yet. _Upset Volstagg? Let's up the wager._ _Get everyone good and flustered._ A strange grin crept onto his face, an opportunity to offer real if certainly harmless chaos to the situation. Also, deep down, there was a sense that it might be pleasant to have backup for a potential storm like this one. "So you intend to invite friends to this impending family debacle?"

"My warriors have been constant companions of late, a chosen family. Our father has been accepting of this."

"Indeed." The grin stretched. "And do you think there's any chance that privilege might extend to the somewhat more disgraced side of the family?"

Thor studied him for a moment, not getting it. Then his face blanked, comprehending the size of the outrage Loki was suggesting. "Odin is still... cautious and sometimes dismissive of those young humans, to my dismay."

"What better way to begin to salvage our misunderstandings? They are terribly curious about Asgardian life, these agents. Coulson rather enjoyed gawking at the city when he came at my behest. A feast with the family, even a minor one? He'd be tempted to write a sociological paper for their files." The more he pictured the situation – silently upset Odin at the head of the table, one long row filled with baffled warriors and the other with fidgetingly adaptive humans – the more he liked it.

 _Also it might settle their nerves,_ said that quiet, occasionally startled piece of himself that had come to admit its like for the motley crew. Thor was still studying him, not aghast but certainly thrown. "It's only fair."

"It's trouble-making, if meager and mild." Thor's brow furrowed, as if something strange occurred to him. "I will argue it when I return to the castle."

"Should think you versus Odin, you'll lose."

"...It may be those are not the exact stakes." Thor began to turn, still considering. "I will let you know what comes, as soon as I may. And it may be I will stand victor, Odin's ire fades quicker of late. He wearies of the long battle. You might advance some notice to the Son of Coul."

Loki lifted an eyebrow. "Not the response I fully expected, really."

Thor gave him a tiny smile, not unlike the one he wore as a child when suggesting bad ideas well past bedtime. "You are not the only one who enjoys a _little_ mischief."


	7. Medieval Times Dinner Theatre

7\. Medieval Times Dinner Theatre

. . .

The private dining hall of Asgard's ruling family was a long, warm space set high amidst the towering spires of the golden palace; the central table strewn with candles that flickered gently in a breeze that drifted from the open balcony. Every meal held here permitted a glorious view of the heart of their kingdom; a matter of pride and an eternal reminder of the due import of their charge. Colorful banners and draping silks dotted the high ceiling, each one an ancient heirloom that had taken centuries of skillful work to embroider.

At the head of the table was the carved goldwood chair All-Father Odin favored most, and now he commandeered it just as much as if it were his royal throne. He sat with his flowing grey beard nestled upon thick knuckles, observing the unusual scene set before him with judging, tight-browed bemusement bordered by the great sea of his silence.

Phil Coulson caught Sif doing her best to give his side of the long table a welcoming smile, her hands folded neatly on her armored lap. Behind her, servants swept around the room with efficient elegance, leaving heavy gold plates where they went without a single note of unnecessary noise. Loki did what he could to establish the iffy diplomatic situation with the director before they'd all filed in – apparently, much to Loki's surprise, Sif took Thor's side when presenting his mad idea to Odin. She'd done so happily, and that enthusiasm and outnumbered odds turned the tide to both princes' favor.

Phil found the support less weird, considering. In any case, at least she seemed as if she looked forward to tonight's shindig. Whatever anarchy Loki was hoping would come out of it, which to his credit he'd been pretty up front about in his message. Looking along the table at the nearly entire crew Phil had been forced to bring with him, Loki was probably going to get that in _spades_.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Mack leisurely studying the elegant twin-spined fork that, according to Loki's hurried cliff's notes on _How to Not Embarrass Yourself in Front of Ancient Royalty or at Least Go Down Trying,_ were intended to spear the thicker cuts of meat that would be served as part of the central meal. On his right, he caught May's look just before she went back to returning Sif's smile. Calm and prim in an agent's crisp blacks, May might loathe formal parties but she had the proud carriage for it. So did Bobbi, really, although for her part she was studying the distant-looking Odin with bald interest and a total lack of fear. She looked at ease otherwise.

He caught the sound of Daisy muttering something to Fitz where he sat between her and Mack – the young woman slouching with distinctly unladylike comfort in a dark and pretty dress, the engineer in a formal suit that looked as if he'd last worn it to an underage grad party. He'd told Fitz he could dial it down a bit, but no. The ginger curls had shaken at him worriedly. _Someone_ had to help Phil try to keep up appearances.

Phil didn't have the heart to tell him he looked like an off-Broadway production of _Death of a Salesman_. He locked eyes with the formally-dressed Loki at his place across the table from Thor, the paler prince in a soft black tunic adorned with a few slashes of green and no trace of the old armor. Loki, who was already maintaining a campaign of keeping his mouth shut with a hand brought up to his chin to further mask his expression. The tiny flicker of delight in his eyes spoke for him instead – along the other side of the table, Volstagg and the slender one called Fandral looked _miserable_ at Loki's tiny victory.

Save for Coulson, Odin and the rest of Thor's male warriors simply did not know these new humans at the table. They knew only that they were affiliated with Loki and had come at his request. So that made things instantly tense.

It wasn't going to help that Volstagg refused to look at Phil, still harboring some shame at his role during Loki's last imprisonment and trial. Subtlety was not ever going to be that guy's strong suit. According to Loki's earlier cheery whisper, however, Fandral hadn't looked so thrown by a dinner party change-up since the time he'd attended an event with his current great love... only to find the new guest of honor was his _other_ current great love. Phil put together an immediate guess as to how that scheduling mix happened.

Hogun sat stoically next to Fandral, studying the humans in his own silent and easy way. If he were startled by the dinner setup, that guy would never show it.

. . .

It was Thor that broke the silence as the servants brought the first plates loaded with warm loaves of bread to their appointed places on the table. "So... And how do you good mortals find our Asgard?"

Daisy's hand popped out to grab a hunk of bread as soon as she saw Volstagg do the same, her mouth going into instant machine-gun mode. "It's pretty wild. Like, the outside of this place is so _shiny_. I want to ask how you guys keep it like that. Is it a magic power wash or what?"

The All-Father shifted in his chair, visibly tensing at the curious, irreverent voice. The young woman didn't notice or didn't care, still going. "I think literally everything in this place is like six times my age, too. Maybe the bread's been proofing since Jimi Hendrix died, I dunno." She bit in as Thor's face pinched in what was either pain or the start of startled laughter. "God, that's good bread. The crust is, like, perf. Is there butter? Do we have galactic butter?"

Volstagg pushed the silver bowl of sweet-churned goat's cream toward her without a word. He looked poleaxed while she took a heroic dollop of it for the rest of her bread. The look on her face suggested heaven.

Coulson and Loki shared a glance. The palm set across the black prince's lower face tightened slightly. Phil would have sworn on the entire theological section of the Library of Congress that he was already choking off a huge laugh and decided, what the hell, he'd do his part in covering for it. "I'm surprised and honored we were permitted to attend." He turned his head to incline it politely towards the great grey king. "Thank you, your Majesty."

The broad hand dropped to the wide arm of his chair, as the lone eye searched the face of this other leader – if a small one. Coulson had survived Odin's study before and smiled easily until the king eventually deigned to speak. "The request was a fair one, Coulson, considering." Then the All-Father fell silent again.

"Considering what?" muttered Fandral under his breath, eying the comparatively diminutive Fitz and then the rest of the human line-up that was, incongruously by Asgardian standards, half women. By what had to be pure accident, Hogun's elbow abruptly found its way into the fencer's ribcage.

"So, umm... can I ask how the Bifrost works?" Fitz's question nervously wormed its way into the air. Luckily, he didn't see the immediate look of dismissal on Odin's face. Mack did, and the corners of his eyes tightened slightly. "I mean, obviously it's a functional Einstein-Rosen bridge, a-a-a controlled wormhole. It's the control that really interests me – we haven't nailed down the science behind the cosmic strings we think we'd need to stabilize the sphere." He blinked. "Maybe that explains why certain mythological depictions of the Yggdrasil map place the realms in a sphere pattern – the wormhole effect made visible millennia before we mapped the theoretical surface..." His voice trailed off as his lips still worked on unspoken questions. He looked up into the silence that met him. "I don't suppose you have a paper I could look at?"

"The Bifrost is a sacred tool," said Odin in a cold proclamation. "It does not need _human_ comprehension."

"Okay," said Fitz. He looked down at his empty plate. "I'll just chew it over m'self."

"It will take you lifetimes." Now the dismissal was plain in his voice.

"Kip Thorne's not dead yet and he's done some _brilliant_ work on the relevant theorems." Fitz looked up and found Sif's reassuring smile. He rallied. "So what do you all talk about for fun?"

"Killing," boomed Volstagg, cutting off Sif without realizing it. He set his shoulders back with pride.

"Just like sweet country Georgia in the huntin' season," said Mack, sotto voice. He didn't look impressed.

Coulson shot Loki another look. They were both painfully aware that this night had a good chance at spiraling out of control any moment. It was just that Loki was so obviously looking forward to it. _You can take the jackass out of the stable, but he's still a jackass. Though I have to admit, we're cheerfully aiding and abetting_. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Daisy pulling out her phone for an Instagram shot of the other side of the table, and then the newly arriving bowls of soup and other delicacies. Not at all offended, Thor grinned wide and cheerfully as he pulled Sif into the side of the picture. Fandral's eyes widened at the stunt, unaware this was increasingly normal to the prince.

When she was let go, Sif cleared her throat and gestured towards May. "Do you find the soup acceptable?"

"It's very good." May put her spoon down for a moment to dab neatly at the corner of her mouth. "Some sort of bone broth?"

"Exactly right, with a blend of the finest produce of Vanaheim. What you call a _mirepoix_." Sif gestured towards an enormous plate of what looked like some sort of hybrid onion-fruit... thing. "Hours of simmering. My mother would make a similar dish."

"Cooking," said Volstagg with a mutter, sopping at his russet beard. "A proper conversation at last."

Sif's expression didn't alter a whit, nor did she regard the warrior. The off-handed nature of Asgard's biases was old territory for her. "Of course, my mother let me select and hunt the wild auroch we'd use for the marrow stock, after years of battling for the right to do so. The proudest and most far-ranging had the best flavor to them. Once I spent an entire summer stalking the perfect beast. A great fight, and I managed it alone." She smiled for May alone, looking distant at the memory. "We ate well for weeks from the meat of that animal."

May's normally smooth and stoic expression perked up a little and she leaned across the table. "I'm not too into hunting on Earth for a lot of reasons, but I _did_ end up in Zambian bush for most of a year. Tracked and ate water buffalo more than once. Those things are crazy-dangerous. Store hamburger was never the same after that."

"The honor and the pleasure of doing what you must for your survival. It adds a flavor that cannot be replicated." They shared a set of knowing grins. For a moment, the latent tension around the table was forced to ease off.

Fandral looked across the table to Mack, who'd already adopted Hogun's method of sharing the bread and broth together. "You seem well at ease already, good guest."

"Just a dinner with friends, you know?" Mack didn't look up from his bowl, but the flicker of his lashes said he'd examined the fencer's slim face. If there was bait here somewhere, _he_ sure as hell wasn't going to go for it. "Different environment, same story. You learn to enjoy the nice moments. Never know when there'll be another."

Thor took the opportunity to cut in over anything else his friend could add, his voice booming with approval. "Asgard's mild temper has been a welcome wind of change in our season of war unending. The miracle of peace." He chuckled, trying to catch his brother's eye. "Even we long-lived can be surprised by the new."

Loki inclined his head politely, his face tightened into something noble and blank. Thor's grin faltered slightly, then noticed both sides of the table eyeing each other cautiously. The tension was trying to come back, despite these little attempts to keep the middle ground.

"A miracle," said Odin, leaning forward to cast long shadows across the table. "We yet struggle for balance, but we name these slow hours peace." He slapped his hand against the arm of his chair, his expression dour. "Bring the meat and mead, for I sense our guests hold a need to sup – on a fine meal, if not each other!"

Servants fluttered through the room with nervous energy, chased by a temporary silence on both sides of the table. With luck, figured Phil, the sheer insanity of trying to manage the approaching plates would keep everyone's mouth shut for a little while.

. . .

"Okay, okay, but no, okay." Daisy's eyes narrowed in thought over the lip of a goblet almost too big for her sole available hand. She was having trouble working with anything at the moment; Fitz was already nearly passed out against her side. Slightly lightweight, the engineer was severely outclassed by Asgardian dinner drinks. Frankly, most of the table was. Mack's head was drooping hard. She rallied her thoughts back together. "I have the same questions the Avengers do. If we're not worthy, and they're not worthy, but a robot can pick up the hammer and you can, like, just put it on an endtable as if it were an ashtray or whatever without paying for a new floor, what _exactly_ are the rules here?"

"The Vision is no mere robot."

"That is _so_ not my point, but." She blinked slowly, losing words in a rubbery sea of alcohol.

"It is integral to the point you're trying to seek." Thor shifted on the bench, trying not to share a chuckle with Sif at the humans' drunken predicament. Even Volstagg looked sedated from the amount of beer and mead he'd consumed in the last two hours. Only Hogun and Fandral looked as sharp as at the meal's start. "It is not the blood nor the bone. It is the _spirit._ Worthiness has many facets – not only your carriage in all things but your faith in yourself."

Fitz stirred. "Like the sorting hat. Hufflepuffs. Huff-hufflepuffs _could_ be Gryffindors, but have different goals. So they don't qualify for holding Godric's sword, but it's not because they can't. But they're... loyal. No one more loyal. Don't need recognition, but they're... they're the _glue_."

There was a soft _snerk_ from Loki's end of the table. Thor looked baffled.

Fitz's voice became more strident. "Hufflepuffs did _not_ get a fair representation in that series! I'd be _proud_ to be a Hufflepuff!" He nearly shouted the last before sagging back into Daisy's side, half-gone again.

Bobbi, who had been dozing atop her closed fist, twitched and looked around for whatever people were shouting about. When there was no threat found, she sighed and took another long drink off her goblet. After a moment, she caught up to what the conversation had been talking about. "What house was Professor Lockhart in?"

"Ravenclaw." Coulson with the save. He still looked mostly with it – while technically not on duty, his instincts said staying more sober than not was going to be the wiser choice tonight. By tracking the number of refills and making a well-educated guess based on previous benders, it seemed clear both princes were on the same wavelength as he. As was, notably, Odin. He seemed insistent on watching the proceedings wrapped in as much silence as he could manage.

That said, Asgardian beer had a kick in it that could pause a bulldozer. He wasn't going to be sure how successful his attempts at moderation actually were until he moved.

"'Kay. That guy. What a turd. I loved hating him." Bobbi checked out again, her eyes half-lidded and staring into the ripples of her goblet.

"Drunken nonsense." Volstagg reached behind him to tap the mead-keg before a servant could swoop in to serve him. "Fables for children. No warrior's tale, this sounds."

He got a cold, surprisingly brave look from Fitz. Loki leaned behind Daisy to mutter something to him, apparently soothing the affront.

"What was that?" Fandral snapped to attention at the gesture. "Some plot?"

Loki rolled an eye over to him. "I was trying to be polite."

"By whispering secrets away from the party's ear?"

The black prince paused, then went for it with a shrug. Fandral _had_ insisted. "By explaining that the last time Volstagg read a book for pleasure, he was a child and it was a picture cookbook."

Volstagg stood up with a strident bang upon the table, opened his mouth, and then, for a wonder, shrugged. He sat down again and looked at Fandral, still far too ready to take his defense. "That one's true."

A random gurgling noise came from the other side of Phil. He tried to figure out what it was, until he realized with real shock it had been May swallowing a laugh of her own. That was a good sign it was probably time to try and wrap it up. He took the finely woven napkin off his lap and put it next to his plate. It was there maybe half a second before a servant swooped in to clear everything for him. He cleared his throat, a little thrown by their efficiency. "This has been really great, a very interesting look at both our cultures. I'm glad we were able to see Asgard at such a good time."

"Mm-hmm!" Daisy nodded to try and get his back.

Fandral still regarded Loki. He leaned back, voice cheerful. "Asgard's pleasantry _has_ been a welcome change. As your good sir Mack states, a time that should be cherished." A moment later his tone altered and became lighter still. "Though it's simply so _odd_ to behold the spread of this change. Why, I haven't killed a frost giant in what feels like forever." He smiled brightly.

Thor closed his eyes as almost the entire room froze. Only Hogun continued to drink in the silence, visibly unimpressed with Fandral's heavy-handed verbal feint.

Loki's didn't twitch a single muscle in his stiff form until a nerve began to jump in his jaw. "To be fair, the last time you had a _real_ opportunity to try, we carried your gravely injured body from the ice."

Eyes still shut fast, Thor made a soft noise through his nostrils.

Fandral watched the black prince with a sedate expression. "Oh, yes. How did we end up in that situation? It was so complex, I nearly forget."

"My arrogance and anger drove us to the brink of war and a stretch beyond." Thor's words landed like stone, sealing off anything Loki might have added. "The rest is detailing, this is the root. That we have found some peace with that race and realm is a miracle, and a welcome one."

"And all of it born of treachery." Loki still didn't move at the next attack, only stared at Fandral as the man's voice trailed off into nearly a snarl. Even Volstagg looked startled by how fast this assault was building.

Coulson knew he was standing up when he realized he was staring down into Fandral's face. The wooziness told him he'd definitely had a skosh more alcohol than he'd intended. His mouth went off next. "This is _not_ how you were in New Mexico. Where's the honor in trash talking at the table like this?"

Fandral looked unmoved. "We did not know then what we know now."

Daisy was up next, holding the angrily struggling Fitz with her. "Okay, you know wh-"

"I'm gonna _barf_ on him!" Fitz cut her off with a wet snarl that sounded loaded with promise. Daisy tried to keep him balanced only to find Mack taking his other arm to help her. His dark knuckles had gone lighter in his tension. Fitz didn't notice. "I swear I'm gonna!"

"Come on, Turbo, keep it down. Your aim's gonna be crap and you're gonna hose everybody." The way Mack said it, it sounded much more like a suggestion than a deterrent. The big man was giving most of Thor's friends a stony-faced glare that held real physical threat. Now that the gloves were off, he was perfectly happy to go down trying.

Phil realized every human on his side of the table was now standing up, with even the half-asleep Bobbi now on ready point. She had her hand on the edge of a large plate. On the other, Sif looked bleakly horrified at Fandral's rudeness while Thor was almost as red as his draping cloak. Sif smacked her mug into the table. "Fandral, you shame the house of Asgard in front of guests. Apologize for your behavior now!"

"No," said Fandral. His eyes glinted.

Coulson locked his focus on Odin's one eye, more than a little angry at the king's passivity. "This how it's gonna end? Just let people get tossed to the wolves like that?"

"Asgard's sons fight their own battles, when the terrain was chosen of old." The great form shifted in the chair, causing wood to squeak.

Coulson looked at Loki and blinked. The pale prince's hand had dropped from his face. He looked openly _stunned_ , and clearly hadn't heard whatever Odin just said. As much as Loki had accepted actual friendship with his crew, the notion that they would _all_ actually line up to take a chance at getting hurt on an alien world for his sake had never crossed his mind. Not even after Fitz's small confrontation with Stark.

He'd been ready to eat a long-brewing fight for grim amusement's sake, with friends present to perhaps bear it in some meager comfort. Not to watch his side try their best to _win_ it for him.

Fandral's expression began to falter at the row of solidarity across from him. "You do not understand-"

"And you haven't bothered to try." May said, sounding on the edge of furious with the Asgardian. "Guess you long-timers _have_ to be surprised by change, because it certainly doesn't sound like you bother trying to look for it."

Loki was now dead white. Odin studied him with an unreadable expression, his fingers working against each other in the contemplative fussiness of old men.

"Fandral." Thor tried to take the reins of the situation again. "No more words from thee, unless you reconsider the apology owed."

A single flash of regret fled across the narrow, angular face, and then it hardened again. Odin rose instead when he saw it. "Enough. I have seen enough. Peace. Such a _miracle_ is died for, forged from blood and bone and its dream fragile enough to be torn like whispers in a mighty storm." He thumped down from his chair and stood regally, beholding the table entire. "There is no _peace_ in Asgard. I see only warriors waiting for the next kill."

Volstagg turned, looking contrite. He opened his mouth to say something and found himself cut short with a look from the great king. His hand spread to judge the room. "You speak the word yourself. Killing, it is what is at our heart. Fandral, now with the blade. Humans, for good or ill taking sides against you. A fight around every corner. Nothing has changed in Asgard." The great head turned away. "Nothing will."

Coulson stared after him, hearing something he didn't expect in the old man's voice. May shot him a look he barely caught. She heard it, too. Pain. Regret. Grief. No one from Asgard looked after the king. They apparently heard only a familiar fury.

Thor watched him storm his way out of the hall, turning back to the table with as much diplomacy as he could muster. He looked to the humans first. "Good mortals, my friends-"

Something finally snapped in Loki, coming out with a roar of pure fury. "THEY ARE _MY_ FRIENDS!" Now he got up with a start as Thor staggered back down to the bench with an expression that said he realized his well-meaning – but critical - mistake. Loki jutted a slender finger directly at Fandral in targeted rage. "Thor tries for diplomacy but I will demand satisfaction – _you apologize_." The blonde mustache wavered in the start of defiance. " _Not_ to me, I'll not force your humiliation for that. You apologize to my guests for your behavior, for your simpering insults, and for your utter lack of honor at the table of Asgard's king."

Fandral's face looked white-hot. He scanned his side of the table for someone to guard his back. Hogun stared calmly back, Volstagg was flush with shame as he stared down at the table's surface, and Sif narrowed her brows together at him.

"If you want to insult me, you do it with open bravery, you do not play some mummer's hero with your words at the dinner table. Shame me for your own anger in the one place you ought not. _Apologize,_ or I'll cut it from you, _I swear it._ There are still fangs enough in me to ensure that." Every tight line in the bone-white face told a tale of deadly seriousness.

Fandral stood up with shaking slowness. He stared into the prince's face, then turned to regard Coulson. "My most earnest apologies," he said. The voice was clipped, stony, and slow, but did not hold any obvious lie. "My old hates and biases have scattered what could have been a fine meeting between our two worlds. Son of Coul, you have always acted with honor. That you hold _that_ one a friend astonishes me, and I have been blinded. I recognize you are yet an honorable man. Ask me no more than that now – but I bow my head and ask forgiveness for putting my mistrusts onto you and yours."

The sleek blonde head bowed until Coulson couldn't see his face. "Thank you," he said, knowing that adding anything more than that could possibly open up another storm.

Loki nodded once, accepting the exchange. Then it was his turn to stride abruptly out of the room, his steps long and loping like an enraged wolf.

Thor opened his mouth to say something, only to realize Coulson was doing almost the same thing. Strangely, it didn't seem the human was going after Loki. He shook his head and regarded May, knowing she was functionally next in command whenever Phil was out. "We are all hurt and somewhat drunk. Please. Accept an offer of some private rooms in which to rest for a little space, with my word that there will be no more affront permitted." He managed a wry grin. "For the sake of your good young Fitz, if nothing else."

Fitz hiccuped, following it with a wet sniffle. "I so could've." Mack patted his back. Gently, so as to not accidentally dislodge his weaponized contents.

"I would have filmed it and put it on Facebook," said Daisy under her breath. Bobbi was now helping to keep _her_ other side balanced.

May glanced at the drunk, pissed off remnants of the crew, then nodded to Thor. "That'd... probably be best."


	8. Caged

8\. Caged

. . .

Loki stalked through the palace's wide golden halls, not looking, not seeing. His mind was so utterly consumed by a roaring fire that the end result was much the same as if he'd gone blank. The old mistrusts of Asgard. The failures on his part. The mire and the abyss. The broken things he would never, could never change. They all demanded his attention.

One old hissed whisper lurched up from the bottom of the deep well still inside him – _Why do I bother to try? Why?_

Answered swiftly by a single image that stood in for the whole, little Fitz threatening to lose his dinner all over a decorated warrior of Asgard in a fit of ginger anger. And then flashes of the rest, standing in solidarity without hesitation. For him.

That calmed the storm, through the rise of new confusion if nothing else. The old well still whispered its cruelties into his ear, however. Was it enough? Was having these companions, this last chance through them ever going to be enough in the face of what he'd given himself to endure any time he stepped away from his self-imposed exile? He paused in the archway of some darkened space or another, beginning to realize that wherever he'd instinctually started to head, it was downward. He considered that, then understood with a chill what path he was on.

The prisons. He'd spent a lot of his life in prisons of various forms, of course. Some mental, many blatantly physical, all of them lending some sort of shape to the road he'd taken to get to this moment. But right now, he was walking freely. Still hunted and haunted both by some of the old angers, true. Furies given new life tonight by his surroundings, but, whispered a more reasonable voice in the back of his mind, furies that he would have to understand and deal with eventually anyway. If he wanted to keep clinging to the freedom he'd scratched out for himself.

He did. He had scars enough now to prove it.

Loki looked up at the dark red banners, the marks of the Einherjar assigned to the security of the low halls he was approaching. Why try? Because _they_ did. Those humans that were his friends. Seemingly incapable of giving up or accepting long defeats. Even small failures were taken as some painful lesson that could lead to something more another time. Certainly, sometimes they gave up. Gave in. They were not a perfect species. But they _tried,_ and they could embrace change when so much in the universe forever looked leery at the concept. They'd taken him, when no one else would embrace the risks attached to his name. It still hurt to know that.

Another anger tried to rise in him as he found his way towards the steps to the prison proper. Thor could have done more to stop the fight before it got going. The Warriors Three oft heeded him without hesitation in hours where there could – should - well have been doubt. He could have spoken sooner, stepped to Loki's side more openly. Anything, but for the cautious diplomacy he'd tried at the end.

And yet, Loki miserably concluded, there were just as many reasons why he didn't. Not for mere cruelty, either. That was not Thor's way. But because the boundaries between them had been long broken and remapped. There were plenty of times in their youth when he would have lashed out at Thor for taking his burdens, claiming he could defend himself perfectly well. How was Thor to know, when the years were long and strange and they had both been afield in their different ways? He had a thousand knives of his own, and it would be no wonder that others would tire of being pricked to bleeding.

It was odd to conclude that he had already mostly forgiven Thor for the matter, even the slight overstep at the end. Thor erred in kindness, knowing not how great nor all-consuming his shadow could be. Odin, now. There was another thing entire. That was a field where he still didn't know the terrain. Why truly had he permitted Loki's request, and the farce of tonight's feast? And then dared to act as if _he_ was the affronted one, taking the chance to storm out with his ire near a physical thing around him.

Flaring his nostrils slightly and with his mind still awhirl, he strode past the prison's brace of guards.

. . .

"You _dare_."

Still angry himself and slightly muzzier than he probably should have been when attempting a stunt like this, Coulson only blinked at the king's bombastic near-shout. They were in some long hall or another, he didn't know exactly where. This one finished at a great doorway that opened into some veiled private room. They were remarkably high up in the palace at this point, he knew that much. A pair of honor guards glanced at each other, the impassive faces flickering once with something he couldn't catch. The director ignored them otherwise, gesturing back down towards the way he came. "What the hell was all that about?"

Odin's one eye blazed down at him in direct fury. "You presume to come after _me,_ in _my domain,_ near to _mine own chambers_ , and question me as if I were some mindless beast of Midgard? Human, I will warn thee once, hie yourself back to your companions and I will permit this trespass to be forgiven. You are a child race, and know no better."

 _If you treat kids the way you treat other races you're not hip to, I'd say I've got a pretty clear idea why Thor doesn't want to rule and why Loki_ still _has enough issues to personally stock my dentist's waiting room._ In a fit of approaching sobriety, he managed to not blurt any of that. "You could have stopped that with a word. Forced peace at the table, instead of watching it all go nuts at the end. Why didn't you?"

There was still only the fire upon the greying face.

 _Oh, screw it. If he imprisons me for being a jackass, Loki'll get me smuggled out by morning._ It didn't occur to him to doubt that outcome. "You've got a kingdom ready to kneel if you so much as belch a command, but you sat there on that chair tonight like you've got no power over anything. And when you left, you looked almost more miserable than anyone else. Not that anyone bothered to notice. Is that the problem? ' _Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown_ ' and all that other jazz?" _You know. Unless he executes me right here and now._ He took a glance at the guards.

Yeah. They were staring at him, waiting for the order.

 _Not my best move._ His cheek twitched under his eye. "Also, if you want to avoid incidents like this one, I more formally suggest an earlier cut-off on the kegger. Sir."

"Get out."

Coulson was trying to decide which anonymous-looking direction to start moving towards in tactical retreat when he abruptly realized the All-Father hadn't meant him. Thick fingers snapped at the pair of guards to underline his command. They hesitated a moment longer than was proper, and then marched in unison down the hall and out of sight.

 _Oh, cool. I'm going to personally get killed by the All-Father. Well, that's a good one for the epitaph._

 _Phillip J. Coulson_

 _I Shit Talked an Alien God-King, What You Got?_

 _1963-2015_

 _His Chunks Will Be Missed_

He dug in. "You know, if you execute me, you're going to have to deal with the fact that your kids'll leave flowers on my grave for decades."

"Are all of you this wearying? The girl of yours with a mouth like a river, that Jane Foster, all you quick little lives and your _nattering."_ The king regarded him, the fury guttering out and replacing itself with a heavy weariness. "I don't understand your species."

"What don't you get?"

Odin waved the question off with a sour mutter, then gestured to the doorway. "Your impudence and your previous behavior in service to this kingdom buys you the briefest salvation, and a chance to answer a single question born of a king's whimsy. Do that, and I will continue to pretend as if this trespass did not occur."

Coulson paused before following the All-Father through the doorway. Well, he'd walked himself into this one. "What's the catch?"

A hand reached out to pluck another thick goblet from a table set just beside the inner door of his private salon. "First you have another drink." The ancient voice was unamused.

"Oh God, I'm gonna die."

He realized he said that out loud when the lone eye fixed on him with brittle severity.

. . .

Yes. It was still a prison.

With the season as calm as the street-stories said, the clean cells and their gold-lattice force walls stood generally empty. Loki loped past them, glancing uninterestedly at most. He was following his more delicately trained instincts by this point, resolving to force his mind to empty itself by examining the past with as much clinical detachment as he could manage. The sorcerer's focus, finding the balance within the self before attempting any further work of spirit.

A challenge this night, but a worthy one if he wanted to calm himself down. He allowed a slight sigh to heave its way out of his slender chest, ignoring the handful of imprisoned raiders from far afield and passing only a glance at the Einherjar patrolling in safe pairs in their full and functional armor. He was not their prey but now a permitted visitor, and so their impassive faces kept turned away from him in some semblance of respect.

Motion caught his eye from a cell up ahead, not so far from another set of stairs – _the_ cell, his cell. Oh, yes. He'd told Sif once what he'd known and done. Lorelei, that cagey sorceress, placed in the old box meant for him. He'd gotten a laugh out of doing it during a time when wearing Odin's hoary old mask meant few such amusements. Apparently Odin never bothered to undo his work upon reclaiming the throne. One cell was as good as another.

He glanced up as he approached, coming into better view under the gleam of soft yellow light and found himself with a thin grin at her obvious disappointment. Her face lifted up to show her eyes as they narrowed at him. Hoping to pick out a possible visitor's face and seeing it was only him, she looked away again in a quick sneer. What little he could see of her cheeks were tight and flushed under the half-mask she still wore at most hours, to ensure her voice would go unheard in the ears of those more vulnerable men.

A cute trick. Not one she'd ever admitted to trying on him – but more to at least one of her goals, it hadn't worked on Thor as fully or as long as she'd liked. After all, here _she_ was, and there was his brother, still courting one lass and missing the affections of another. Even Thor's affable denseness could be a benefit to his own safety sometimes.

There was another quiet old bitterness lurking here, if he would muse on it too long. His thoughts were already derailed, with picking up the pieces of himself proving to be trying work. Two sisters vying for the attention of a young and golden prince, and then obviously plying the black one for access when they went unwanted by their prize through these conventional methods. They fought each other for their desires, and then worked together to try and play the princes with magic's charm. It had passed a few summers and at one point the attention was pleasant enough. If untrue. It wasn't love that the elder sister had given him, and he had not been foolish enough to think of it as that.

Well, not for long, anyway. His own face quirked at the private admittance. It was always that sister who had been the more clever. Amora. She'd at least almost made it seem real before turning away to focus on her own, greater, and more deadly ambitions. Gods, those were old memories. He didn't know why they came up to dwell in him.

As he passed, he looked up to study Lorelei one more time. She steadfastly ignored him, a quiet but forceful anger clouding her brow and painting her cheeks with a flush.

He knew that kind of anger. Rather than meditate on that as well, he moved on and out of the prisons, deciding that memory was enough a cage on its own. He would go seek the night air instead, and get his center back that way.

. . .

The guards left him at the base of the stairs to a small balcony garden high amidst the towers of the palace. By then Coulson's head was only slow instead of a mossy haze. He'd always been pretty good at sobering up in a hurry. He just wasn't used to what Asgardians considered an after-dinner cordial. Getting himself safely up the stairs wasn't so bad, but it was the first look from Loki that cleared up another layer of muzziness.

The pale face held countless dangerous warnings, all of which faded when he realized who his visitor actually was. "How in blazes are you upright?" A slender hand gestured to him. "This is why I never bring drinks to Earth. I'm not going to be responsible for your internal organs." He frowned, looking again and this time actually seeing. "You were not this muddled when I left the hall. What did you _do_ to yourself?"

"Got tricked into drinking too much with your asshole dad." Phil blinked as Loki's face went slack. Well, _that_ came out with an extra viral load of honesty. "He's actually not that much of an ass. Well, he kinda is. It's complicated. Did you know that?"

"That filial relationships in Asgard have the complexity of subatomic physics? Coulson. Go lie down." Loki shook his head slowly, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with two fingers. His other elbow was shoved against a beautifully carved outcropping of stone, elegant enough to be mistaken for one of the flowers on the other side of the high rail. "How did you even find me?"

"After I got tossed out of the All-Father's rooms, I asked a guard who asked a guard who apparently played telephone up the line until I guess someone took pity and jingled that Heimdall guy. Do you not have a paging system? Is this place like Japan, where everything looks so crazy high tech but most of their offices are running on fax machines that are probably still loyal to the Tokugawa Shogunate?"

"That's... actually not the worst parallel I've ever heard." Loki sounded exhausted. "It isn't a great one, either, but no, you've got me on paging. We still have literal pages for most matters. Urchins in fancy tunics running around delivering messages oft writ by hand. It's tradition."

"No wonder you have to live for millennia. I don't know how the hell else anything gets done."

Loki let go of his face and turned to stare at the flowers, obviously not really seeing them. Then his brow furrowed. "Right. Back up a moment. First you said you were drinking with the All-Father, now you just casually dropped you were in his chambers." He looked over his shoulder at Phil. "Did you do that damnable thing where you chase people down and demand answers?"

Coulson's still-numb face scrunched in lieu of a real answer. In response, Loki stared up at the wisps of nebula lighting up the clear night sky. "And you did it to the All-Father."

Phil shrugged at the dead weight loaded in the prince's voice. "I figured if I got myself arrested, you'd come up with something."

"That is an _idiotic_ amount of trust. I should never have suggested this." The sleek black head shook, long hair still prone to tangling wildly at the ends. He looked over when Coulson sidled up to lean himself against the railing. "So, what, is he letting you roam free before the morning execution? It takes usually about an hour to contact that mammal to get his ship and I like having extra time to plan. Do we need a guard's distraction?"

"I'm fine. It's cool. We're cool." Coulson squinted at pretty flowers that were absolutely not tulips, but started with a similar bulb shape at the base. "He's not always like this, is he? The king?"

"What? Strident, prone to incalculable rage, hammy, cantankerous, occasionally stoic, distant and yet forever judgmental? Why, yes, essentially. Did I ever explain properly how quick he exiled his _favorite_ son without letting him take so much as a change of clothes? That's not even touching the florid dramatics of my own disowning. While often vaguely understandable, he's rather... overreactive." A low snort. "And yet your mythos paints him as some great god of wisdom. What was that about family counseling again? Perhaps I should collect some business cards."

Phil didn't know what they were supposed to be. Not even the colors were quite familiar. Some sort of pale blue blending into a rich royal purple. They spiraled at the tips of the petals, reaching for the nebula above and their scent was something hauntingly like lilac and lavender, touched with a silky musk. "What are those?"

Loki followed his gaze to figure out what he was asking. "They're new, some spliced hobby plant of Eir's meant to commemorate." Something tense entered his voice and Coulson recognized it as carefully controlled sorrow. "Frigga's Veil, she named them. Night bloomers. They reach always for Valhalla and live only for a season, as I understand it."

Oh. Coulson winced. "He's grieving."

"I'm not surprised. Many are yet mournful at the queen's passing." Loki said, low and quiet. "It is his nature to hold pain close. As warrior and king both."

"It wasn't that close-kept." Coulson took his gaze off the flowers to puzzle at Loki. "You guys aren't seeing it."

"Coulson. Forget it. This is the _absolute_ last topic I want to discuss," Loki said. He looked like he was starting to form a genuine migraine.

"No, wait, bear with me. I think it's because you guys are too close to see it. He asked me a question. I don't know why I got away with it – maybe because I did right by your trial, maybe it's because according to your rules I've got enough of a lord title or whatever, I don't care. I went after him because he didn't look just angry to me. There were all kinds of flavors of upset, pains you recognize when you're telling people someone they loved died. And I've done that a lot, Loki. You know I know what pain looks like. Melinda saw it, too. Anyway, he asked me this after I called him on what I thought I saw: _When all is lost, why do you humans continue to try?_ "

"Funny, I contemplate much the same on the regular. Because you're stubborn little fools that think there is value even in that loss. You're not perhaps _wrong_ but-" He cut himself off, a thoughtful look crawling slowly across his face. "Why does that sound like he himself thinks all is lost?"

"Why'd he let a pack of humans run around the dinner table when he's not real keen on us? He hates Thor's girlfriend and he acts confused as to why you're hanging around Earth. He's incredibly dismissive about the whole thing. I don't know if he cared about my answer or was just having himself a mean laugh. I can't tell. But that's basically what I told him. What you said. Only considerably nicer." He shut his mouth when Loki started staring at him.

"We're too close." The green eyes dimmed as Loki looked inward. "Is that the answer to the riddle? But how... I've got to consider that." The eyes sharpened again. "I may need a favor while I think."

Coulson put his back to the railing, trying to find a more comfortable place to lean. Like every railing on Earth, that wasn't going to happen. He wasn't concerned about the favor yet. "Odin's your hidden threat?"

"I don't have an answer to that. But... your question given sounds like the core of despair. And there is no threat to Asgard that can be seen. Thor's eaten himself half to death in the search and I've already trod the same ground with the same results. So one eventually must look closer. To the heart. And that is, in my regrettable experience, where shadows hide the most." The prince looked rueful. "That is a thing that _would_ be missed, because the All-Father's heart is well-hid stone. I would prefer a different answer, honestly. I do not care to look close there. My sympathies for the king are not easily found."

"Even if you have any sort of common ground?"

"Even and despite, Coulson." Something hardened in Loki's face. "There are always old temptations to remember my hates, and regardless of the first shades of reconciliation, the king and I are not ever likely to be close. We never were and we never will be. Look into the face of a man who says in anger that you should have died on a frozen rock and try to find love there."

Coulson watched the sharp, brief pain that passed Loki's face as he talked. "Worst game of Where's Waldo ever." A smile tried to form on the Asgardian's thin lips, then failed. "You hate him?"

"I don't know. I have. I did. Sometimes I think it's pity." He reached out and touched one of the Veils with the tip of a single finger. "Stay in Asgard another day or so. A few, two or three of the others as well, considering Earth's troubles cannot be waylaid long. Understand, I'm asking you this as a jester's ploy. The distraction of this night writ larger and hopefully more offensive to his old eye, his ire at your continued presence enough to fix his sight narrowly. Thor will help and protect you from any response – particularly once I explain to him at least the edges of my intent. And I will do that much, I promise."

"Anything specific or just day-tripping to gawk at the place? Because we can do the whole tourist thing in this joint easily. I can just rev up Daisy and Leo and watch 'em go."

"Well, don't cause a galactic incident." That finally drew a laugh, a short, familiar bark. "That's _my_ field. Let Fitz into the library, then, he'll cause havoc and a sheaf of written complaints there by merely existing. Any that stay can go where they like. You've guest rights under my name and I guarantee this will be half-expected. Mischief, after all, and your distressed observers will tread lightly since Fandral nearly munged the whole damn thing up for everyone. To permit a further rudeness would be unthinkable."

Coulson thought about bringing up the warrior's cheap potshots. Apparently Loki could tell, because one of those warning looks came back. Better to let that rest for now. "What are you going to do while we're here?"

Loki looked up to scan the sky, looking for something he didn't bother to explain. He frowned, thoughtful again. "Try to look closer at the heart of the kingdom and find its shadow, just as I promised Thor. Look within, if I can think of a way." His eyes narrowed.

"You've got half an idea already."

"No, I've an idea. What I lack is its execution. Perhaps I'll join Fitz in the library for a spell." He grinned, fangy again and bitterly amused. "Literally."


	9. The Library of Dreams

9\. The Library of Dreams

. . .

Thor watched the small ginger human dart from stack to stack in the great library nestled in the belly of Asgard's palace. The words in those great old tomes would be lost on the young man without his help, but Fitz seemed to find a useful interest in a number of the schematics even without it. Thor couldn't resist a grin that felt broad and young on a face prone to recent cynicism. The enthusiasm visible in Fitz's shaking hands was infectious. Here was a scientist in his element, placed humble and high amidst Gods. It made for a striking contrast against Stark, whom Thor would long consider before letting near this place. A good warrior and nigh a friend, but the Iron Man's ethics made Thor fret many hours.

It made up for the severe looks from a handful of the library's tenders. They flitted disapprovingly through the grand central hall to monitor the matter, but as long as their princes were here, they would say nothing outright. As was proper. He lifted his chin to get the young man's attention. "You hold a book regarding the science of propulsion so far out of date for us that even I might stumble over its archaic notes."

"This where you tell me it's where we might get in about fifty years if we hurry?" Fitz's eyes darted up to study him before tracing a finger in the air over the golden text and the mechanical lines accompanying them.

"My own guess based on experience is that your theories will diverge and thus you will find those ideas interesting but ultimately a waste of time. The matrix was not only fuel-dependent but relied on certain mineral priming. Fussy, as I dimly recall. A failed evolutionary line."

"Hmm." Fitz gently cradled the spine of the book as the corners of his mouth dipped inward. "Hmmm. Value in following different trains of thought, especially those so remarkably different... but on the other, I've not got a lot of time in here, do I?" Quick but gentle, he placed the book back on the shelf where he found it. Balled hands dropped onto his hips as Fitz looked up into Thor's face. "Okay. My original question, then. Got a Popular Mechanics: Bifrost Edition?"

Thor laughed, casting his head back enough to catch a glimpse of Loki high above in one of the more heavily restricted alcoves. The slender figure was moving fast towards the study tables with several tomes nestled in the crook of his elbow. Once upon a time that would have been a most common sight. Even a comforting one; the slow drone of a lecture on theoretical mage-work putting him to an easy afternoon nap more than once.

Fitz must have caught his look, lifting his head to see the same. "Is it all magic up there?"

"Not quite all, and of what there is, only those things that are not most proscribed." Thor looked down to catch the knotted together brows. "Those tomes are kept even deeper and some may even be lost down dusty hallways. Though I expect _he_ knows yet where many of them are. Regardless. There are many disciplines to his art among the realms and beyond. We have a fair collection of these styles."

"Bet there's a _whole_ cabinet just on chaos/order philosophy up there." Fitz grinned at the arched eyebrow on Thor's face. "I got to watch him and a couple other sorcerers talk a few times. I picked up the gist."

"Interesting lad." Thor extended a hand to him. "You will not find simple discussion here for your questions about our bridge. But there are a few minor tomes on some of the underpinning structure, some recently annotated when we reconstructed it. I'll help you through them."

Fitz beamed. "Wonderful!"

. . .

"And have you left the boy asleep in a happy nest of books well past his hungry comprehension?" Loki shut the book in his hand, reaching for the next. He looked tired, with a dull heaviness behind his eyes, but there was also some amusement behind a question whose answer he suspected.

"Near abouts. A familiar scene, I think." Thor settled himself atop a broad, thick desk of stone and ancient black wood, getting an automatic look of disapproval for it. On a similar instinctive reflex, he slid back off the desk and took the stool next to it instead. Old habits that neither of them recognized. He wrinkled his nose at the dusty air of the balcony rooms. "I've heard from Sif. Most of your friends have returned safely to their realm. Meanwhile, yon Coulson and the lady Johnson have been busy in the markets, asking questions and startling our people. He presses to visit the far starport before returning for the night, claiming that our strangeness pales next to the greater galaxy's wonders. His statement to his friend and fellow agent was, I quote direct from Sif's message, ' _There's stuff over there that would blow your mind_.'"

Loki snorted. "I'm always surprised the port's yet in permitted operation."

"Your many crimes against Asgard considering, there were a few decent public works decisions made while you sat the stolen throne." Thor allowed a grin at the sharp look he got. "I didn't bring it up for a fight, Loki. The port's presence has eased certain diplomatic snarls with the Corp, much less the Kree." Thor leaned back, crossing his arms as he remembered. "Speaking of, I would have thought perhaps you or Sif might have alerted me about the young lass's bloodline. Instead I discovered it through an incautious reference this morning at breakfast, after you left to begin your studies."

He got another look, this one loaded with a lot more cautious study. "Is that the fight you seek? She's a human girl, and has a place among her people." Loki brought up a hand before Thor could finish his protest. "Think carefully. I _might_ have a stone to throw here."

"I worry more at the unveiling rise of those terrigen-changed along Midgard's surface than your friends and their loyalties." Thor picked his words carefully, catching both meaning and warning. "I seek no fight over that, either, only remain cautious of times to come. The girl is kind, if occasionally a living dervish. There will be others. And where will they stand, if they have no friends and no purpose like this one?"

The black head shook from side to side, another book gently set down on the desk near where Thor sat. "I have no answer yet. I focus on this riddle alone for now. All things in their time."

"And what progress is there on your riddle? Will you tell me more fully what you have in mind?"

Loki put a hand on the book he'd just placed, the thin face smoothing over into the old, unreadable mask. Then it tightened again and he pulled another stool over to sit himself down upon it. He remained quiet.

Thor watched his expressions change, wondering what lay behind them. "What you told me of Coulson's encounter with the All-Father... I yet find it hard to believe that our answer hides there. Father has been forever steadfast. Asgard is his life, his duty. He _is_ the kingdom, in and out." Thor leaned back, resting against the desk. "For him to threaten it, be the root of our doom, what would that possibly mean?"

"So it would be best to rule it out." Loki glanced up to examine the expression in his eyes. "Not my preference, not my wish. But it is the tactical option. No less a reason, this possibility entire comes from someone whose instincts in these sort of things tend to be surprisingly reliable."

Thor considered that. Yes, Coulson did have a good eye for people. The human's honor itself spoke much for Loki's current status. If _he_ thought he saw something awry in the All-Father... hard to believe. But possible. "And by what method? Have you found one?"

Much to his surprise, Loki looked away with a bleak expression. He tightened his mouth. "One, yes. And there are two wrinkles to it." He looked back. "The first is ethical. It will amount to seeing what should not be seen, and I would be at risk for denying the privacy of a king's scout. There are things I can do to mitigate this, but it is a heavy choice to make. I suggest to see through his faithful eyes, you understand. And his eyes see much."

Thor's face clouded, comprehending what he meant.

"I do not come to this lightly. It must be agreed upon before I act and we will have to bear that this is a crime of no small accord. The second is... logistical in its nature." He waited, searching Thor's face.

"My fears run deep." Thor looked down to follow ancient cracks in the library tile with his gaze. His next question was muttered and meant for himself. "Are they deep enough to agree to this?"

In his mind lurked the witch's vision – all life in Asgard bound to a maddened eternity in the depths of Hel, bound by rags and crested with the skulls of monsters and beasts. Whether literal or only symbolic of some great disaster meant to obliterate the realm, it frightened him in a way that went through the bone and chilled into the marrow. The loss, the despair, the risk that he would contribute to this disaster somehow. A destroyer, said that dead, mad Heimdall. _He_ had been a destroyer. How? What did the Norns mean to show him? "I remember a thing our mother said often. That there should be no secrets in a family."

"Kindly. Noble. And I am not certain it is the truth. The last she said that to me..." Loki's voice faltered. "It wasn't a particularly good time."

"I want to not be afraid, Loki. Is that selfish?"

The slender chest heaved in a soft sigh. "If it is, I cannot fault you for it." He patted the book under his palm. "The logistical wrinkle: I do not have the requisite tools here for this particular form of augury. I need a _particular_ kind of nexus, a lens, a core-power nestled at the heart of certain dedicated threads of magic. A crux and vinculum designed for this purpose. This is in itself a great if archaic working, the kind of obscure magical architecture that a school or coven would create and maintain over years for their study. The good news is, if I can access an established core, I can harness it just fine." He paused, the tension coming back into his face. "The bad news is that we have relative access to two such possible constructs and I like neither of them. And the one I like less is, much to my dismay, the better option."

Thor saw a discomfort growing in his brother to match his own. "Where?"

"Muspelheim, for one." Loki managed a slight smile at Thor's abrupt wince, studying the dark blue cover of the book on the desk. "A little unpleasant, but there are old bastions where idiots attempted to bargain with the more demonic locals. I could survive it, but there are also no certainties that what I require is there. And no one to ask. Not much backup. Little hot. Small problems, you understand."

"Already I would prefer the other in your stead."

"Would you?" He didn't look up. "I can try the other, but." He stopped. A muscle jumped in his jaw, tightening in a line down his throat. Thor heard something click in his throat when he spoke again. "No certainties there, either, though I'm to understand they've reignited certain older ways. Peace there might be, but it's a risk. There's a great many risks for me walking into that situation. Is _that_ selfish to mention?"

"Loki." He knew instantly, and his heart dropped into his belly. Thor tugged the book from underneath Loki's hand, almost surprised that he let it go without a fight. "I cannot ask you to risk _jotnar_ wrath for my fears. Set the books aside, we'll find another way. If our father is in shadow, we will draw him out somehow and not risk further damnation."

"There might not be another method, and your fears chew on time as a possible factor. In my experience, you cannot let such things fester for long. I will try, if that is what is required." Loki still didn't look at him.

Thor stood up, banging his fist once on the desk. The force behind it painted the slash of a wince across the pale face. "No. For all our conflict, I won't ask this. I can't ask it. The ice is where all this damned pain began for us, an abyss in all our lives."

"The place I ultimately started to lose my mind," Loki muttered, so low Thor nearly missed it. He raised his voice to its normal volume, still calm. "And what if doom chases too quickly to be otherwise stopped?"

"Then let it come and be ended with honor!" Thor found himself biting off a snap. He waved it off. "Enough. We've lost enough in this family, in this kingdom. What's left should not be thrown aside so lightly. Not for my fears. I need more than a night's terror before asking too much of another. I won't ask for that, Loki."

Loki closed his eyes before nodding slowly. He looked pained. "I'll keep looking for now."

Thor ran a hand down his face to calm himself, resolving to consider other possibilities. Perhaps some way of approaching the All-Father himself. "As you must. I'll tend to Fitz below, seek out if Sif has further news. Dinner will be quiet tonight, I think. I hope."

"At sunset?" He glanced up for the nod Thor gave him before departing, the book he'd taken away still clasped in one broad hand. "Yes. Of course."

. . .

Loki waited until Thor was fully out of sight before reaching inside his tunic for the other book he'd hidden away. The correct one – what Thor took from him was a simple volume of aeromancy, written in a tongue just complex enough to complete the ruse. "Thank you," he said, the soft words not echoing at all in the still library air. "That is what I needed to hear."


	10. In Through the Front Door

10\. In Through the Front Door

. . .

Heimdall didn't move from his appointed place at the center of the Bifrost's raised control platform, but his golden eyes followed Loki's approach across the luminescent bridge without blinking. From far across the horizon Asgard's gentle sun began its descent, though its full setting was still some few hours off. The warm gleam lit the black prince from behind, lining his dark tunic with the sky's soft reds and catching each twitch of the large burlap sack he held easily in one hand. A thick cloak with a heavy hood and trim was snugged under his other arm. "You know what you do?"

"I know what I did, Heimdall." Loki said. He looked up into the impassive brown face of Asgard's first and last guardian at the gate, his own wry and not a little tired. He lifted the bag he carried a few inches to display it better, revealing dirty hands and more than a couple ragged fingernails. "I stalked a raven across balconies and risky rooftops, careful to know that I saw it and it did not see me. Careful to be sure I caught the correct winged nuisance. I hold Munin, Odin's raven and Odin's memory, hooded, senses bound, and what a pain in the arse he was to corner." A faint quirk formed at the corner of his lips at the end of his sardonic near-chant. "Also, I have a list for the architects and the dwarves about several such rooftop flaws I damn near broke myself on."

Eyes filled with stars narrowed, bemused by the plainspoken admissions. Heimdall gestured to him with a single lifted finger. "And now you come to me to turn yourself in?"

"No, I come to you to ask passage through the Bifrost's gate."

Thick brows arched in open consideration. Heimdall refolded his hands around the hilt of a sword that could knock on the doors of the sky. "To where?"

"To Jotunheim. I've a mind to come in through the front door, well-heralded and incapable of hidden treachery. For once. It may not be enough." The bag lowered as the last trace of humor left Loki's voice. "After you let me through, send word to Thor about what I've done. At your leisure, of course. He will sputter and rage and quite possibly do that thing where he paces dramatically along the room and he will tell you it is all his fault for not steering me hard enough away from this idea of mine. It isn't, but kindly let him if he does. It will make me feel better because I am, in all probability, not in for a good night."

Heimdall's next words were low and deliberate. "Since you've answered my questions thus far, I ask one more. Why, betrayer prince and trickster enemy, do you think I will do as you ask?"

Loki let the question sit between them for a moment, knowing Heimdall would spend the pause studying his face carefully with those eyes that could see so much. He hoped they saw him plainly indeed. "Because I ask it in Thor's name, in service to the purpose he called me here for. The purpose I know you know. And because if I take a single misstep in that frozen realm, they are apt to smear me across the ice and keep my flayed ribcage for a souvenir. You'll be in a position to watch every second of it. Either I take a vital step towards the safety of the realm, or I die. Win-win for you."

The huge sword in Heimdall's hands caused a roaring grinding of gears as he wrenched it into positions he knew well. "I like this streak of honesty in you. Very well. For Thor's command." Teeth bared in a grimace that could theoretically pass for a smile. "Tread well in Jotunheim, Loki. Tread well indeed."

Loki smiled back, a fake sweetness showing more than a few teeth as well. "You're much better at this than Fandral."

A rumble of dry laughter followed him through the spinning portal of light.

. . .

This time, like one last, Loki understood bitterly why he was not left entirely cold at the tall gates of the frost lairs. Breath passed from the dark blue lips of the massive guards staring fiercely down at his comparatively tiny self and lingered long in the air, until snapped away by blowing wind and frozen chips. No gentle snow here at the heart of the _jotnar_ citadels, but a rain of razor's ice instead. The sky was hidden by thick, deep clouds that could barely be seen beyond the onslaught and he could feel the wind cut through the heavy woven cloak he now wore.

The pair of guards on either side of the gate had to be twelve feet tall at least, their shoulders gnarled in what was either protruding bone or grafted armor. Loki couldn't tell, and save for the plain fury and deep-set alizarin eyes, he recognized little in the equally bony faces. They stared, and with his mouth as dry as a dead bird's bones, he stared back. He had no idea what they saw when they looked at him, and what he saw he could not keep that frightened old whisper from naming _monster._

Finally there was the rattle of metal from somewhere deeper within the vast space that seemed as if it were some kind of courtyard, and then a third guard appeared in the wake of the sound. This one was taller yet than the pair, but more slender and with a sharp face whose boniness flowed back to reveal the strange geometry of the skin a little better. Still blue, still with red eyes untrusting and angry, still staring down him. The new guard muttered something into the ear of one of the others and with a shift and a disapproving growl, the cold steel of the spiraling gate scraped open to let him in.

The tall one beckoned to Loki, the low growl forming into the all-speech, a common language of the Nine Realms. "You are permitted audience. Nothing else. I hear the queen and obey without question." An arm the length of a huge tree's branch pointed at an enormous door barely visible on the other side of the icy courtyard. "Walk it yourself. Remain in view of the high guards at all times." Deep blue lips pulled back to reveal teeth, no few ending in sharp points. "You come during a storm, Asgardian, the kind we name _the_ _Kiss of Knives_. The cruelest sky. Even we do not travel in it unless we must. Try to not be shattered as you cross this field, small one. The wind likes to snarl within our walls." The guard turned away, ignoring him as he assessed the walk ahead of him with a small swallow.

 _So, this is fun. Great plan I've got here._

It helped a little that this dose of mental sarcasm sounded distinctly like Coulson.

. . .

 _Now_ he felt the cold in the air, marking it as something deeper and crueler than the forces that normally shaped the realm. The cutting wind sliced its way through everything when it was corralled into something almost like a cyclone within the courtyard; the sky seeming to cut itself past every layer of clothing Loki had and seemingly between even the layers of his skin. His scarred leg took the worst of it as he kept the bagged bird sheltered close to his body, a lancing reminder of all things past and changed.

The game, he told himself, was to try and cross the field with as much regal stoicism as he could muster. Considering his discomfort and the squirming bag still in his hand, it wasn't an easy one. Just past midway through his long walk, the wind began to scream shrilly down from the black sky past the jagged citadel spires. It carried with it new ice, thick and blue and no longer the small razors that had greeted him. Knives in-damnably-deed.

The shivers began to hit as the wind reached the apex of its assault and he wondered why, knowing the truth of himself, he had grown to prefer certain warmths in his life. If it was some flaw, after already being a failed runt. The cold was bearable for him, though after a point he found it bitterly unwelcome. Jotunheim's storm outlined clearly for him where that point was.

Loki broke and ran for the door, relieved it was now clearly in sight. Once he was on the other side of it, he realized that none of the guards walking the walls had bothered to laugh at the unwelcome and now ice-coated interloper. He didn't know what to make of that.

More guards now, in a gatehouse that was at markedly warmer than the outside, if still frozen. Low braziers the size of washtubs lit their profiles, huge blue hands occasionally reaching out to take quick wisps of that warmth for themselves. They muttered to each other as he crept closer to the low guttering fire, considering that, too. No, they did not care for the worst of the chill of this storm, either. Perhaps they risked no real danger from that deep ice, but it seemed it didn't mean they always chose to like it.

Other guards stepped heavily out of his way to mark the path he needed. He felt the red eyes everywhere. Watching.

. . .

If there were parallels to Asgard's throne room, they were not plain to Loki's eyes. The queen of the Frost Giants held court in a circular room lined with spires of delicate ice and capped by a dome. Loki glanced up when robed attendants let him past and found himself surprised to see that the dome was, yes, omnipresent ice, but ice that had been pieced together in a complicated mosaic of countless shades of blue and green. They scattered a mage's light across the room to create a rainbowed shimmer whose effect was bright and pretty and not all cold.

More steel braziers flickered dimly on other side of a low stone bench and atop its cushion was the seated queen in robes of thick fur and flowing ice-spider's silk. Farbauti, once Laufeyswife. Her arm rested across the back of a sculpture of some twining, snarling beast as she leaned back, the effect regal and threatening both. Like the guards and all before, the queen stared outright at her unwanted visitor. The dryness in Loki's throat threatened to choke him before he would get his first chance to speak. He found he could not look at her full-on, lest he see some fragment of his own hidden face there and begin to slip into the old terrors. He felt her eyes leave his face to examine the handful of prior guests and attendants drifting through the room. "Leave," said the queen, also choosing to use the all-speech. Her voice was low and strong, carefully controlled. "Matters of the Nine are for my hands, not my Council's."

"My lady." The protest started in the growl of a giant shorter than some, her broad, sharp hands hanging down from the edge of a robe.

"Out!" She jutted her chin at the doors, her tone leaving no room for their arguments.

He could hear many of them muttering to themselves as they filed out, bu the details of their complaints were not for his ears. A few stared at him with real heat as they passed, but none dared make a threatening move in the presence of their leadership. What was left was a single guard at the queen's side, a figure smaller than the rest thus far. Only a couple feet taller than himself, and they carried themselves for quickness. One guard, their face hidden behind a fully armored helm and thus the queen's personal killer at need.

"May I set this down, Your Majesty?" Loki lifted the bag to jostle it, all his trained control going towards making his voice light and conversational. From the depths of the burlap came a low and sharply offended _caw._

The red eyes, wide and fine in an angular face, regarded the bag and then him once more. "Speak what you want and then leave, Odinson. I will not bargain nor treat with you as you did the dead Laufey." There was nothing living in her voice. Granite and steel alone.

Loki let the bag lower enough to almost scrape the hard floor. _Odinson._ He had not heard that name as his own in a long time. In Asgard, many knew the truth. They still did not here. He couldn't tell if that was a comfort. He inclined his head politely. "I must in humility ask your indulgence for a sorcerer's request, the use of such tools as to be archaic in these years of magic's art. No bargain I will name in the interests of mistrust, instead I will say that you ought ask your price for this small favor."

"The tool?"

"A lens, a seer-school working. If you still have such a ritual device."

Farbauti snorted. "It lies in dust and disuse, but we do not toss away what is old without cause. And in the bag, then, your prize to be studied." The _caw_ came again, the affront in its voice growing louder. Loki watched her hands tighten along the edge of the bench she sat on, each finger longer than his own face. "The study of Odin's pet. The same stories as of old. You come to Jotunheim with treachery against your own. Another theft meant to destroy the pause between our realms."

He felt something enormous crawl down along the inside of his throat as she rose, towering over him. He was forced to look at her now, seeing the untrusting look on a severe, ageless face with black hair swept back and down like another cloak. There was a ghost in that face, and he knew he was always going to fear its reflection. "I don't. I swear it by whatever holiness you name, that is not my purpose this day. Asgard's Heimdall watches and listens and I will look to him as witness."

"He does not, Odin's traitor. Not in this hall. His gaze stops at the veil to this room." She smiled bitterly at his clear surprise. "I bought that privacy, paid for it in long bargains with your All-Father, and I will not sell it to you."

 _Heimdall might have mentioned that, but then again..._ Loki cleared his throat. "Then I'll step into the night and say it all again plain, for whatever witness you want."

"This night is death's pretty walk, meant for Her passage alone." Still she towered over him. One hand reached out to sweep slowly atop the brazier, causing it to spark its rising fire. The room warmed slightly. "You should have fled through the courtyard. According to my guards, at first you did not. Our children know to mask their faces from that sky, but you tried to walk it. Slightly brave. Most unwise."

"Explains why I didn't get a laugh," he said, meaning to pitch his voice for himself alone. The guard's ears were quite sharp. Now he got that laugh, low and dour. He refused to flush. "I come in a different work, as I say. The crime I commit is service to save what I can, or at least be certain of where I seek a hidden trouble. I do not seek destruction."

"Then I'll name my price, Odinson." Farbauti motioned to the guard, pressing them to move not out of the room, but to a far corner for some privacy. Her voice lowered further and in the rich sound were threats. "You will tell me _why."_

Loki realized he knew what the question bordered. He said nothing, trying to brace himself.

"Not your treacherous jest that let our warriors into Asgard. Not the death of my mate." Queen Farbauti stepped closer to him and he did not look up at her this time. Her voice began to rise anew, sharp with deliberate frost. "That last was also the night when the lightning came, sharp and white and wild. A thing none of us had ever seen before, and we marked ourself fortunate it lasted only minutes. The lightning struck everywhere, coursed through what remains of our cities to shake the crumbling towers. In the far fields where we cannot live any longer, the canyons widened with a rumble as the light shook through the buried earth. There were plans for reclamation, plans set back decades by that unnatural storm. The scars of our broken realm were snapped apart and we were left to bleed anew. We lost lives that night, Odinson, and in the silence and the terror that followed the dark we realized the _intent_ was our obliteration."

The question came again, this time in a roar. " _WHY?_ "

He stepped back once, finding that he couldn't answer. His throat locked itself tight against everything he could have said, every word of truth buried in fear and pain. The raven in the bag sensed his dismay and began to struggle. What he did manage to utter came out with a hoarseness he couldn't hide. "I am... terribly sorry to have wasted your time."

Feeling numb, he turned to go. At the edge of his vision, he saw her hand reach out to touch the wall. The veil that swept across the door turned into a thick sheet of black ice and his heart beat fit to fall out past his feet. The rest was silence. He couldn't even hear her breathe. His swallow finished with a dead click as he forced out what he could. "I regret what I did. That is meaningless to you. It changes nothing, heals even less. My sorrows are all I have to give freely. If you want my life to purchase the rest, I ask at least an extension to finish what I came for."

"Your life. For your Asgard." It was almost a hiss. The ice peeled away after a long moment and he could hear the footsteps of the lone guard, soft and padding. He started when the queen spoke again, the fabrics of her robes rustling to break the silence further. "I will name a price again in the near future. Be it known, I will mark interest on that cost."

The guard passed through his view. He had a glimpse of the narrowed eyes in the black helm before they disappeared up the hall. He hid his surprise this time, he could do that much. A reprieve? It would not be safe to speak his own question of why. "And now?"

"The _spek-eil_ - _nur_ lens is in this citadel's oldest functional wing. You are fortunate." Farbauti's voice was grating, ensuring he understood that his 'fortune' was cheap. "Another fortress and we would be forced to travel to it. The knives might fall for days."

 _We?_

"You will not use the device without supervision. In fact, _you_ will not use the device. It is old and likely not all what your books think it is." Now something new crept into her voice. Brutal, grim amusement. "Fortunate again. I am trained in this _seidr,_ like my mothers of old. You will trust me with your bird and ritual and vision, or you will depart now and never return."

"That almost seems a price, a glimpse of Odin's memory if you should happen to take it."

Her shadow passed over him. "You say this yourself. You are in no place to bargain. Follow. Or go."

He followed.


	11. The Unwanted Unseen

11\. The Unwanted Unseen

. . .

Heimdall bent in a quick, efficient bow at the entryway to the smaller and more informal dining hall Thor preferred to entertain his friends in. At the moment, such friends involved only the God of Thunder himself, Lady Sif, and three of the mortal humans Loki had drawn to his side the night prior. At the glance from his prince, Heimdall creaked his stoic face into a faint smile that held no mirth whatsoever. "My prince. I must regret that I am sent to tell you that Loki will not be joining you this night."

Thor's face darkened, then sprung into realization and tense shock. "He didn't." Heimdall bowed his head in response, hearing the heavy bench clatter as the prince rose. When he lifted his head again, just as predicted, Thor was now pacing heavily back and forth across the length of the room. At one the end of one of these circuits, he slapped at a thin blue book he'd left aside on the top of a counter. It flew against a wall to be nearly lost under a low set of shelves. "I knew he'd given in too easily. I didn't think beyond that."

"My lord-"

"It's my fault. Again, I trusted overmuch." A broad hand passed across Thor's face as open tension filled his voice. "Only this time the price for that mistake may well be himself."

Heimdall arched a thick black eyebrow, not sure if he was surprised at the woe in his prince's voice, or if it was due to how cleanly Loki had foreseen his brother's reactions.

"Um. What's going on?" Fitz put his fork down and looked at Coulson, still tearing at a piece of buttered bread. The director was watching Thor, waiting for the answer himself with a tight calmness born of already being more than a little used to Loki's drive to tear off in unwise directions. "I know he was researching something, but..."

"He's gone to Jotunheim, chasing after this mad terror of mine in my stead." It came out flat. Coulson put his bread down. Now his face creased in actual worry. Fitz saw, using that as his cue to start crawling his eyebrows up as far as he could get them. Daisy put a hand on the table, her own expression somewhere between concerned and mad. Thor looked to them apologetically and then back to the warrior for confirmation. "He seeks a way to answer my riddle, by bargaining with a race that bears him only grave ill. Heimdall?"

"He has done this, my prince. He bade me to tell you only when he was well gone. I watched his travel as long as I could, but Odin granted the _jotun_ queen a fraction of privacy from my eye and he has since passed from my view."

"Look for him again!" Sif said. She was pushed back from the table now as well.

"I... cannot."

"Or won't you?" Thor stopped pacing. "I know there is no love-"

"But I have my honor." Heimdall inclined his head deeply in an apology for cutting off his prince's words. "The inner citadel and the places where they craft witch-work were given for their eyes alone, in trust with our king. I have since a glimpse of him in the queen's company, passing from one area to another and then gone once more. So I may tell you he lives at my last sight. I came with my message upon my certainty of that." Heimdall paused. "It is his current status, nor whether he will return, that I cannot know."

"Do we go get him?" Daisy looked from Thor to Sif, both her hands on the table. "I mean, what's the protocol here? Are they going to hurt him because of some of the stuff he did? I know I don't know everything but I know there's a beef there." Neither spoke. "Do you wanna wait till I just start screaming for an answer?"

"Daisy." Coulson spoke from underneath a hand now pressed against his face. "We can't. That's not a fight we can jump into, realistically. He would have known that walking in. He's got no backup on this." He took his hand away and pushed his piece of bread with an expression that said his appetite just took a hike. "There's almost nothing we three can do. And Asgard's not going to push a diplomatic situation until they have to."

"Further," Thor shook his head. "It was decided between us both that we would attempt to keep these concerns of ours from Odin's eye. To rush to my brother's aid regardless will give up our secret. He ignores us this night in desultory grace, but he _will_ see us if we all flee to the gates of our realm with purpose. The questions Odin would ask will bring grave consequences, not least to Loki himself."

"So we _wait?_ " Daisy's eyes darted to Fitz's face in disbelief. He looked ill.

"Yeah. We wait." Coulson glanced at Thor, giving him a firm nod to try and console him as much as his own agents. By the expression on Thor's face, this was challenge mode. "Better odds than you think that he walks right back almost like nothing happened. The amount of crap he's pulled and still came back from is frankly staggering."

"I wish I could believe that, son of Coul." Thor looked back up to Heimdall. "Please. Return to your post. Send word if anything changes and I will come. Anything."

. . .

The old ice floor was covered in long, deep grooves of ornate runework of a type so intricate Loki had trouble parsing much of it out, with all of it leading to a central pedestal structure. This _was_ the construct he'd read about, however. He was certain of that. With a flick of her hand, the queen dismissed him outside of the circle while she tested the working's stability in her own method. So he stood at the arching crystalline windows instead, breathing air so cold it smelled like brittle purity itself. He could watch a yard far below, its field currently mostly safe in the lee of the brutal wind and littered with dueling giants.

Most of them were everything he'd ever personally known in legend or in battle. Like the gate guards he'd encountered, they were enormous, hulking figures slamming into each other with roars fierce enough to cut through the screaming wind. A few darted more quickly at each other in the gap formed as the larger combatants broke away, and he knew those kind, too. One had been fast enough once to grip his wrist and show him something he'd never wanted to discover. A shiver went down his back at the memory, his vision filled for a second with that nightmarish moment of watching his skin not freeze as Fandral's had moments earlier, but turn that unwanted, impossible azure.

He couldn't square what he saw now with some of the slow-moving robed figures they'd passed in the corridors. And the unusual guard that kept watch over the decrepit mage-halls – as massive as any of the warriors below, but with a round and mild expression buried within a soft leather cowl that was distorted by a crown of short horns high atop his brow. That one stared down at him curiously and didn't speak. Loki couldn't fathom why, or what the silent giant thought he saw.

Farbauti had caught his look back up into the mute face and said only, " _You are not owed answers."_ He lived with distant, troubled curiosity instead, looking down at the warrior's drills and recognizing certain of the harshest war cries. All that knowledge part of another of his past bad ideas. Acid crept to the back of his mouth as he acknowledged that he'd comfortably marched himself into another one, eyes wide open.

"Give me your stolen cargo."

He turned away from the training yard to unfasten the knots around the mouth of the burlap bag, reaching carefully within to avoid the raven's angrily flexing talons. They were not as sharp as a hawk's, but they would certainly try to do their best if latched into his skin. The black beak was less of an issue. The ravens could be hooded and bound, and so he had done. With magic and small scraps of leather both. "Do you need his senses freed?"

"No. The lens seeks the mind, not the meat. And I suppose it will help cover your tracks better if you need not fuss with what it might have seen this day."

Loki inclined his head in silent agreement, passing the softly arguing bird over to her with as much gentleness as its squirming would allow. He didn't care for the bird, but he had no interest in harming him, either. "I need glimpses of the last several months alone." He paused, considering. "A little longer than that, perhaps. Since..." Coulson's notion of a man possibly trapped in loss and despair struck him. He looked up at the silence and found the queen staring at him with a cold expression. He cleared his throat. It would not do him any favors to dither and waste her time. "Since the loss of Asgard's queen."

Farbauti took the bound bird to the central pedestal without responding to him. In her long, strong hands, the raven looked much smaller now. She was able to easily hold him in place with one hand while her other seemed to goad the pedestal itself. Loki wasn't sure why, then he watched delicate, interlacing layers of ice peel up from the central device to create a temporary cage.

Her other hand came away as the cage finished forming itself. She looked at him, noting his bemusement. Then she looked away again to weave the device into activation.

The runes lit up – and then the images came in a rush, flashes of memory pouring across the facets in the floor. He scanned as many as he could, seeing much of nothing and hearing less. Much of what Munin bothered to recall for Odin's purpose was sight alone; he was a scout, not intended to be the best or most durable archive. Sometimes words also came through, if they were precise words in still air or something Odin noted seriously. There were the ordinary, forgettable moments of everyday life as picked up by the inhuman vision of the bird. The long, tired face of Thor after some battle or another. The feasts. Pacing guards and the dull thrum of their feet. The queen's hands moved and for a moment he could tell the timeline changed, for there she was. Frigga. Alive. Smiling across to her king on his throne as he smiled easily back, in the long, quiet hours after formal audience.

Instinctively, he turned away. These moments were not for his eyes. "Too early."

"I'm calibrating, Odinson," said the queen, her voice full of concentration. "Old workings and not the most precise without a careful hand. Be patient, I want you here no longer than necessary and so I will not dawdle on this past... Ah. Now. Lonelier hours."

Loki looked back to see her hand beckon more recent moments into place. For a second he saw the arrival of Coulson in the hall of Asgard's king – not during this last visit and its disastrous meal, but the prior, during the time when he'd called the director to his side in need of a dire favor. He could read enough of the gist from the human's lips, the carefully methodical explanation of how he himself seemingly – and had – killed a world. And the impossible reason why. He resisted the urge to look away again from the acceptance of his crime, knowing the queen regarded him once more as the images flickered. He remembered full well that her delegation had been there for the finale of his trial. Not her. She had no time for a murderer then. He still didn't know why she bothered granting him even a moment's worth of time now.

The flicker of her hands pressed time forward. Long nights. Lonely silences. And now and then flashes he recognized. The tall gardens, going fallow in the end of summer. The salon of the handmaidens just beyond Frigga's now-dark private rooms. Farbauti's voice was musing as a mystery came into sight, her hands guiding the warp and weft of memory. A shadow, there in that sanctuary. Not Odin's shadow, but another there with him. "There are many of these images, Odinson. Almost nightly as we approach the now. I find there are clearer ones to pull together."

Feeling more than a little unwilling, Loki stepped closer to puzzle some of the scenes out. He didn't have to try hard as the more recent memories snapped into clearer visions. Farbauti's hands spread to highlight these nights as his lips parted. "That's impossible," he said, seeing clearly what he tried to deny. His voice sounded dead to his own ears.

Farbauti murmured something to the device. Now there were repeats – similar images, but different, still-recent nights. They flickered along all the facets of the room and in each of them, Frigga's frozen, lost, beautifully regal face lit from within. "A ghost, then. She yet haunts the place she died."

He couldn't stop the snap from biting its way past his cold lips. "She rose to Valhalla!" He stormed away towards the window, every muscle in his face taut with denial. Below, the warriors still struggled against each other. Lost in the practice of violence. He stared at them. "That isn't her."

"I'm expanding the images. Look closer. Perhaps there's something more there." Farbauti kept her voice neutral, that lower edge of severe taking it lower than any Asgardian woman's voice. "Hmm. There are some where the bird remembers words."

Loki braced himself, not ready to hear her again. He couldn't bring himself to turn. Instead, he shut his eyes and let the wind lash at his face.

 _"_ _He loves the humans now, our Thor,"_ came the soft, familiar voice, touched with an eerie deadness. _"He will never take the throne. He thinks they need him far more than we ever will."_

"Hmm." The rustle of leather and silk followed the queen's disapproving mutter. Time flowed.

 _"_ _Both of our sons gone. They'll never come back to your side. I'm so sorry you are alone now, my king. I wait for you."_

Softer, almost sibilant now, another night. _"I remember the stories of the end from my youth. Same as you, my love. The end is not the end."_

The ghostly, ghastly whispers came closer together as Farbauti nudged time along. Much of it blended together into a theme, the same exhortations that Frigga waited for Odin beyond the end. The protestations of memory. Fragments of simple and well-meaning advice. And then the return to legend.

 _"_ _Forever is not the same as eternity. You can yet watch the cycle begin again, at my side."_

Something started to crawl and slither over his skin at the way she spoke for Odin's ear alone, forcing his eyes open.

 _"_ _We could fix all our mistakes. Raise them both with less hidden cruelty, remember our kindnesses and not lose them to despairs. We won't fail our children next time."_

The growing urgency in dead Frigga's whispered tone forced him to turn. He watched as her gleaming shade leaned close to the openly crying king, a translucent hand raising up to pass through his white-grey hair without moving a single strand as a raven watched from the railing with unblinking eyes. _"The cycle's doom means our love is forever. You will return to me. We will begin again. Nothing will be lost. Accepting our fate is the last peace we have as the last war comes."_ The ghost faded away as the raven's viewpoint wavered and found the sky instead.

"One more. Recent. Possibly even last night." Her hands wove time together along all the planes of the ice and Loki did not want to hear the ugliness that came from the ghost's lips. But he listened anyway, the tips of his fingers gone numb.

 _"_ _You see? Nothing can change here. You've lost us all. There is only war. The galaxy's pain. The rise of the damned. There will never be peace, not in this cycle. Come home to me so we may try again. Before they both betray you. It already begins. Free yourself."_

Farbauti clapped her hands together, freezing the memories in place. She studied his starkly disturbed expression with a marginally softer one. "Do you see?"

"What I _heard_ were a tangle of lies and fantastical conspiracy, meant to addle an aging king. That was not _her_. She would never coax the All-Father near to the ledge of some welcomed apocalypse, imply he might fear his own favored son. Not for anything and certainly not for some romantic notion of their doomed love." He swallowed down the pain and nausea, looking at the living queen and not the frozen memories. "What do you want me to see? Cast the images away, I do not care to regard them any longer."

"Her, or the sight of an old, weeping man who was once the greatest warrior in all our realms? What fragility there is in all of us, when it bends the back of the strongest – whatever enemy he has been. But you are still correct, I must grudgingly acknowledge. That is not her, the good woman with whom I would bargain beyond our kings' eyes." There was only conviction in the queen's voice.

"Is it for her you do me this kindness, then?"

"You are not owed answers, Odinson. You will take only what you came for, with payment due." The grit and gravel came back. " _Look._ You fear to speak, you fear to think, you fear this realm entire. Asgard's bravest. Look, boy prince, and see what I see. Behold what you came to my door seeking."

Further nettled, he lifted his chin in a taste of old defiance. What he _could_ have said was how much it cost him to so much as stand there, in that place. How much it cut him to see that dead woman again, his first most steadfast ally turned into a lying shade. How much it hurt to be surrounded by monsters and know that under the illusion of his skin he could still be more damned than any of them – and not because of the abominable color, but because of the things he'd done in horror of that fact.

And then, caught in a single frame of that frozen memory, he saw exactly what she meant.

There were rules to illusion and trickery, same as any other magical art. And illusion _could_ carry through mundane mirrors and memory, if it were intricate enough. These were crafts he knew well. An illusion of his could be broadcast across the entire world of Earth and never waver if he were at the top of his focus, never be penetrated even by SHIELD's best scans. They'd tested a few times, mostly for a laugh on bored nights across linked satellites. But Munin was something else, given a fragment of Odin's own vision and bound by old powers Odin never disclosed. His bird's eye was a sorcerer's sight, his mind a sorcerer's lens, and that could be harder to lie to. Mageling kind knew where to look, by trained instinct.

His legs numb and heavy, he stepped forward to see the tiniest clue, an inorganic ripple along the edge of Frigga's shade that broke the profile. An anonymous maker's mark of sorts, trapped by the bird's unflinching eye. Indeed no ghost, only a lie's projection. "Why has the All-Father not noted this falsehood?"

"I would wager it may be because he does not _want_ to see. The words play on real griefs, ones any of us might be prey to in weakness. We can use the emotions to trick the willing mind. Are these not tools any witch or wizard might employ?" She shrugged. "There may be more to the charm, something unseen. There may not be. That Aesir lord is old and age can be befuddlement enough given time."

He looked from the flaw to Queen Farbauti, no longer sure what he felt. Frustrations departed in a slow creep as his mind returned to its usual wheels and gears, assessing what he'd seen. "But it's a certainty he's being used. Prepared for something. Explains away any erratic decisions of late, I suppose." _And erratic decisions to come._ New worries crawled inside him to nest and fester.

"Now your riddle can be answered elsewhere – by whom, and for what purpose?" Her dark blue lips parted in a thin and bitter smile. "Neither trail is here. I have no time for your kingdom's dramatics."

"A moment. Let me think a moment." Loki turned away, finding the harsh wind scraping across the window to be almost a comfort. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her swipe the memories away, her hands moving fluidly above the pedestal. Another roar came from below and he studied the giant as he slammed into a constructed wall of ice to prove his strength to the bellowing onlookers. Another feeling crept along the back of his skull to match the worry, the sense that he had another clue in his hands somewhere just at the edge of his thoughts. So who would profit from Asgard's fall? Who would – or could - approach the king and create this pain for him?

"Think elsewhere. You've got what you come for." Farbauti's words were punctuated by a caw. Loki looked back in time to see the device finally collapse into silence at her last gestured command. The old device was in no hurry to complete its work, made for a more patient time. He studied the bird as it fluffed its feathers against the chill, looking none the worse for the wear as more roars came from below. "Get out of here while I permit it."

"...Thank you. Your Majesty." He swallowed and picked up the bag from the floor where he'd forgotten it at some point. "I am grateful for your indulgence."

"Even sincerity sounds like nonsense from an Asgardian." Farbauti's eyes left him to look out the window, no obvious malice in the words. There was a weariness in her voice to match his own. "You studied the warriors almost more than this room, when you risked no small danger to see it." It sounded almost like a question.

"I am not owed answers," he muttered.

He didn't know what the expression crossing her severe face was meant to be. Rather than let him say anything more, she lifted her arm to point at the far door. "But you owe a debt. I will call for it in due time, and know that I will not offer another delay. Meanwhile, my guardswoman will take you to a place where your gatekeeper may call you home. This path will avoid the open courtyard. A minor courtesy for... suitable behavior."

He bowed his head. "Again. Thank you."

She said nothing, only watched as he turned away. He knew full well she watched him go in silence, and, he could only assume, in private hate.


	12. The Lion in Winter

12\. The Lion in Winter

. . .

Odin watched his elder son return across the shimmering bridge towards the city, Thor's purposeful strides heavy with a concern that belied the firm expression fixed upon his face. He himself burrowed great white brows together as he considered what he witnessed. It took listening to whispers among the guards to be certain, for one of his ravens was away and he knew not where. But despite that he supposed he knew where the _other_ one had gone off to after all. And here, yet as ever, the older brother fretted for the sake of the younger. He knew the why of that, too. The boy would always give hope a chance, even in the face of hopelessness.

 _She_ knew, as well, his counsel of old. He could almost feel her cold hand on his arm tonight, feel the lingering breath in the air. He long since stopped wanting to think. He had allowed the weariness to consume him, the indulgence in sorrows he'd carried first since his sons' dueling shames and the later loss of his wife.

In all these recent centuries, the need for the Sleep crept ever closer and the trance itself held him longer in its paralyzing grasp. The last two collapses had been unnatural, shocked into it once by the combined chaos of one son sent to exile and the other uncovering what he should never have learned. Then forced into it again by his own near-murder, the last pebble of that old avalanche between him and that broken boy. Neither had given him any real rest. He rose back into the world just as weary, wondering if he would ever finally crawl into that magicked sleep and not stir again. Since Frigga's death, he silently pleaded for it. Pleaded for the royal cup to pass from his weakening hand one more time, and each morning he yet woke, still a stagnant king of a stagnant land. Still alone, and all felt lost.

Loki had asked him the question in a cold and quiet hour – _were you surprised to wake up –_ and he had not given the full truth. Surprised, yes, to be not ended by his fallen, changeling son. And weary. And still old. The boy might change, but not him. It could have marked the end of the cycle then, that foretold betrayal and his own demise. But instead he would suffer to see it come to the realm with his own eye. It was not a mercy, Odin judged in his solitude. It meant he suffered the old burdens once more instead. Until that promised, perhaps welcomed end.

 _"_ _Jotunheim, of his own free will,"_ came the mournful whisper behind him, echoing the thoughts that wrinkled his face. _"Why would he ever return here to be wanted? We failed him in this. Even I fear he will betray us once more, as the legend shapes into truth's form. If he comes here again, I fear it will mark the start of the close of our era. The troubles begin, if not by his hand then marked by this moment. The darkness gathers. We will see the first signs soon, if true."_

"Then I will attempt to delay that end, as I must for the sake of my people. For the young who do not know that we are the last generation," Odin said, low and toneless, hearing only part of what the ghost told him. Not thinking, his eye now only for the cup in his hand and the promise of an end that could lead to something better. "But he _will_ come back, despite my order. For the humans he left behind. I have lost everything to that world. They took both my sons. I have looked on their faces and seen why. I cannot love them for it."

All was lost. No future for Asgard. He'd given the Nine Realms what peace he could force for a space of time, a time of rest before the clarion call of the end, but now he knew even that was an illusion. His warriors, them bloodthirsty and eternal, only waited for the fall of some bloody veil. And then the war would come. The last war. He did not know what shape it would take, not for certain. Be it Kree or warlord or upstart Earthlings. It didn't matter.

Let it, said his tired mind, lost in its whispers of memory. Let prophecy reign. There was a bittersweet comfort in the story of Ragnarok. He could accept the coming of the end, perhaps because the legends of what would be after could become true. He reached out a weathered hand that shook inside the sleeve of the fine warm robe he wore, his fingers passing through the edge of the ghost that smiled for him. "I will seal Asgard and turn away from my lost children, though that will not save us. Twilight comes close. Let us see the shape of its shadow, if it does not fear the day."

To that, the ghost said nothing.

. . .

Feeling more than a little like a fool, Loki looked up into the battering ice with a wince as fragments of it struck against his cheek. Again Munin struggled in the bag, weary of being manhandled. He was starting to feel sympathetic to the damn thing. "Heimdall?" he asked again, shouting the name against the sky. "I know we have our differences, but in the name of Hel, open the damned Bifrost!"

There would have been silence, if not for the merciless scream of the wind. He looked back at the pair of frost giant guards. They stared steadily back, brute faces unreadable. Then they looked into the depths of the white-out, hearing something even he with his fine ears could not.

"There's been a complication, Odinson." The call cut through the wind a moment later, the voice instantly recognizable. He would never have expected her to come into his presence once more. The dark profile of the queen towered as it filled the black arch of the citadel's western gate. "The Nova Corp has sent an emergency missive through diplomatic channels to all relevant worlds. Asgard seals its gates with _interesting_ abruptness, sets its shields aloft, and speaks but sparingly of why."

Loki looked away and bit off a curse. He stepped back into the lee of the wall, feeling a little relief as the frozen stones blocked some of the worst of the storm. "I wager I can take a stab at their reasoning!"

"As can I." The severely regal blue face stepped further into the gateway, ignoring the ice as it pattered against the thick fur cloak laid across her shoulders. "You'll need another road out. Based on... past events, I assume you have one."

Yes. There were routes between many worlds; thin places between stone and shadow that a carefully trained sorcerer could slip through without the need for other vessels. Few were perfect; many were one way only and others were unstable. The thinning he used to whisper a handful of blindly acquisitive frost giants through had been one of the best, and he'd sealed it himself to cut off any further risk of temptation not long after his last trial. Now he had cause to regret that decision. He shook his head, his voice grudging. "A couple. One's distant. The other's close. Neither are optimal. They may be sealed, they may open into nothing. I've never had cause to test or tether them."

"Jotunheim will not loan you quarters in which to wait out whatever nonsense your king has gotten himself up to, nor do I expect you'd care for our hospitality." Her voice was sardonic. "I do not like these stretched goodbyes to the unwelcome guest, nor the possibility the All-Father will implicate me in these matters. Pick a direction and run."

"Wait." He looked out across the bleak field, seeing nothing but endless stretches of ice being battered by the storm. "Your missive. Any specific word? Please, I ask one more indulgence."

"Nova couches it in the terms of a high-level internal security matter. Entangled with a world they consider off-limits."

 _Odin thinks we possible traitors, and names my friends in the mix. No doubt goaded into it by his addling 'ghost.' I need to get back, quickly. Thor doesn't know any of my routes, nor what I know. They'll be trapped there._ The worries that had started their festering in the mage-halls became plain on his face, missing the way the queen studied him. "The closer one, then."

"What are its risks?"

The worry overrode his need to be cautious in his behavior. "You care?"

Farbauti shrugged, glancing over her shoulder at something out of his sight. An expression crossed her face, one he almost recognized. It looked like actual amusement. "Gymir is my guardian of both mirrors and doors, though he has had little use for the skill of late. I expect he knows the one you hesitate to name – and I know he knows the old one you used in your trickery and murder. Even I think, by your face, that might be more expedient."

"That one is sealed. I did this so it would not be undone."

"And I say – he is my keeper of _doors_." She flicked a hand at him, unimpressed by his claim. "Also, your presence amuses him. He chooses, of his free will and not mine, to assist your passage. So I will permit his whimsy, as student to teacher and as Queen to subject."

Something thudded behind her, some massive figure bending to peek a red eye the size of an apple through the gate. Startled, he realized it was the round-faced frost giant that had looked at him with curiosity from under his cowl, not with hate or fear. "A... great mercy."

The queen faded from view again, withdrawing back into the safety of her citadel. "There are monsters here, Odinson, as in any realm. That is not all that we are. Remember that if some damned Aesir fool tries to name me collaborator. Follow Gymir back through. You'll have no trouble keeping up."

. . .

Thor looked to Sif as she slipped around the alley's corner, Daisy in tow. A thick hood cowled his friend's face, but even so, he could see the tension lining it. She shook her head, the implication clear. _Not good._ He looked down into the face of the young human woman from within his own plain cowl, who looked to her companions with almost as much stress written in her face. He had promised Loki that he would keep the three safe. He intended to keep that promise, regardless of this new wrinkle.

There was a sealed room of bruised but still-living men in the palace who had learned firsthand his dedication to oaths taken. Remembering that with a grimace, he spoke. "What word from the street?"

It was Daisy that answered him while Sif checked behind for followers. "Traitors in the house of kings, the possible corruption of the realms, a growing unseen threat, yadda yadda. If the king's off his ass, nobody sleeps. That Heimdall dude went as slow as he could, but everything's on lockdown until he gets an order saying otherwise. Spaceport's down, Bifrost is down-"

Sif cut in, gently. "I've sent missives to Heimdall. He cannot open the gate for us. There are guards watching close along the bridge for some waiting threat and we'll do for starters. He will see and send word of what he can, but he is bound by oath and implicit punishment. He thinks he will serve us best by biding than risking jail anew."

Daisy swallowed before speaking again. "We got out of the palace just in time. Real glad you noticed something was up. Nobody's getting in or out there any more. Word says guards were going room to room looking for whatever Odin thinks he's got wind of, and they're going to get sent out in droves to the streets after us pretty soon instead. Heimdall was on his way back to his post to blow his horn thingy to mark the official notice of danger to the realm or whatever. Which is _totally_ not at all like how your stupid End Times story starts!"

Coulson put a hand out to rest it comfortingly on her arm, hearing the nervous waver in her voice. "We're not gonna be the wabbits, Daisy. Relax." He looked at Fitz next, nodding once to keep him steady. If he didn't panic in an alien environment, nobody else would. He had an uncomfortable flashback to running through Knowhere, deaf to the language and with no sense of place. "Okay, plan? We know Loki's got other routes in and out of here. Getting safe should be the top concern meanwhile."

"I am not my brother. And he is not here," Thor said.

"I still got ten bucks says he wanders in like 'what up?' within the next hour or two. We should get somewhere he can get to himself. Once we're safe, I can leave a message for him on how to find us." Coulson patted his pocket.

Thor arched his eyebrow at the calm, easy belief in the human's voice. It was Sif that spoke for them both as she turned back to the group, less surprised and more considering. "You _do_ trust him."

"Yeah. I know why most people don't." Coulson's voice was still calm. "So does he. That's why he'll show up."

Sif studied him, waiting for the answer to be expanded.

"He got tired of playing within everyone's expectations." Coulson glanced at the mouth of the alley as visitors to the busy market swept by. "Wouldn't you?"

Thor shook his head, that part of him always wanting to believe. "I still do not fully understand why you refuse to doubt. But I'll put my hope in your faith, Coulson, and save my questions for later. Meanwhile, we must push further away from the palace gates." He considered the riddle of that – get safe while being findable by the right people. He rummaged his memories and found a couple of possible use – nearby fields well within view of the palace, but private, littered with the queen's gardens. He spent years at play in there, with his little brother reading beneath the thick trees.

And, he remembered, the hiding places clever little Loki scouted out. There among the trees were the small hollows where they pretended frost wolf rampages would emerge from in the dead of night. That might do. He locked eyes with Sif, his expressions often enough to guide his warriors in battle. She nodded back, ready to follow.

. . .

Gymir had said nothing to him, only let that odd smile play on black-blue lips as he peeled open Loki's seal between their worlds as if it were a mere sheet of parchment. The broad hand of the giant and its thick fingers were capable of a sorcerer's perfect elegance, and Loki realized that along the back of that hand were scars so broad and long that they looked like the roots of a tree. They were all in the shapes of countless ancient runes, he realized, flowing along the edges of the giant's natural skin-geometry.

The giant still said nothing when he gently prodded Loki towards the re-opened thinning, but he'd held that hand aloft in a farewell. He did not wait for gratitude before turning away. At a loss, utterly confused, and holding a bird in a bag at the apex of its personal affront, he stepped through a nano-wide sliver of blackness that could tear and refold space.

Microseconds and light-years flashed by Loki, and then there was only the dark for him to land lightly in. He flared his nostrils as he marked his position and knew immediately where he was. Where he hoped to be - the old, unmapped tunnels under the palace where he'd laid his own trails over many years. Certain now-guarded ones led up into the halls proper. Others went to the lost wings of the libraries, and still more went down into places hidden for countless good reasons. The Aether had been down one of those, its passage forced into rubble well before his own birth. He chose another dark route, one that would eventually lead him beyond palace walls, but before he could begin moving, his instincts told him to freeze.

A scent reached his nose, distant and faint and, he realized sickly, familiar. He lunged silently to press himself against the smooth black walls of the ancient underkeep, listening, smelling, tracking as best as he could in the black. Trying to be sure he hadn't gone mad again, lost in those more recent memories.

Yes. He knew that smell. Sickly sweet moisture, the dry, bonelike smell of tortured chitin, and the rot of death. A chill went through him and he knew he was going to have to go down first before going up. He had to be certain. In this, there would be no choice except to be certain.

His hand went to a pocket hidden in his tunic, where he'd seen a message flash its way to him while the giant worked his magic. No doubt Coulson with useful information and a place to hide – it no longer occurred to him to doubt the man's competence. But first, he would have to be quick. He left the bird by the tunnel he would eventually take, then loped quietly down a different tunnel into the caverns below.


	13. Then Out the Back

13\. Then Out the Back

. . .

Thor put a hand on Mjolnir where the heavy hammer lay at his hip, watching the long shadow with narrowed eyes as it passed along the mouth of the shallow cave they'd hidden in. By the light, the figure was above and moving around to the left. He shifted, ready, hoping it was no one he'd have to harm. They'd lost several pursuers just getting here themselves. Behind him, he sensed Sif at the ready as well. The soft whisper of a sword leaving its sheath. And the young woman, Daisy, with hands raised. He did not want to know what she could truly do in a rage or in the need to defend herself. Coulson had hesitantly given a small explanation of the possibilities.

Then the shadow became a person dropping in front of the cave, the figure tall enough to block out the dwindling light, and with a dead-white face cowled in a borrowed cloak. The effect was eerily like that of a mourner living in a new fear of the halls of the dead and damned. All but disregarded in his hand was a squirming bundle. Thor stepped forward once in relief, then marked upon the thin face an expression to match his pallor. It gave him new dread. "Loki."

Strained, Loki's eyes searched his brother, then looked with some fragment of relief past him to the humans, nodding to Fitz first. The young man grinned, looking relieved right back. "Any trouble finding safety?"

"I had to lock a smattering of guards away in our dash out of the palace, but no more harm than that. Sif found the paths to the streets and I led us here. A few pursuers. All lost. No other risks as yet."

"Oh, there _are_ risks. We need to get out of the realm, now. All of us. Out, and regroup elsewhere. I have the next route planned. It isn't optimal, like so much of late, but it'll do without bringing us into real conflict. We'll skirt the city. Good chance we see a patrol, but we ought to be able to deflect them."

Thor shook his head, hearing the rising stress in his brother's voice. "I cannot leave Father-"

"The All-Father is broken and in shadow. He has been used, to an extent even I would call cruel." Loki's tone was curt enough to make Sif shift behind Thor in alarm. The cowl turned away as he scanned the surrounding patch of forest. He turned back when he decided it was suitably quiet. "More than that, he will be in as much danger as any of us as the hours draw close. The kingdom as well. I'm aware you fret for the people as well, and you should. Let me explain more, in _safety._ "

Thor reached a hand to try and grasp his shoulder. His brother dodged the attempt, not looking at him. He looked to Coulson instead, where the human lingered at the back of the shallow cave. "I sometimes think it is _never_ going to end. Suppose I should not have been so surprised to watch this come 'round so soon to be paid."

Coulson gently shouldered himself past Fitz. "Thor's not gonna move till he hears something, Loki. What'd you see?"

"There is an army growing in the ancient hollows beneath the palace. _That_ army, of which I've tried to warn you." The stress increased in his voice. "I don't know all, not yet. I had to be quick with my sight, lest I get myself in rare new trouble. But _someone_ has let a legion of his Chitauri in, and now I think they wait for emergence. I saw them there as I returned from Jotunheim. And what I learned in that realm was dire enough without this revelation." The gray-green eyes left his paling friend and went to Thor, too much white at the corners. "Is that enough? I'll tell you more – everything – but we have to _go._ We cannot brute-force our way through this outright. We need a slightly better plan than my improvisational wits and your hammer."

Thor tensed, ready to fight the decision. It didn't sound like it could possibly be true, but Loki's face held no lie he could find. He looked down to find that, yes, Coulson believed. He let go of Mjolnir, still unsteady in this place next to his brother. "Tell me one thing." Loki glanced at him quickly, then back to his friends. "Why did you go to Jotunheim against my wish? Why lie yet one more time to me, even if kindly done?"

Loki turned away in silence, beckoning them out of the cave with his free hand.

"Brother."

The quietest mutter answered him as Sif led the humans up along the overgrown path through the palace forest. Coulson knew better than to look back at the conversation between brothers. "Because after all these things laid between us, you _still_ asked for my help. This time, I intended to give it freely. I knew the cost to me." Loki's voice darkened. "I did not know it might hasten the tipping point."

Thor tried again to grip his brother's shoulder, but caught only the air as Loki moved swiftly away towards the new path. Hesitating one more moment, he gave in and followed the rest through the approaching night to Loki's next hidden trail.

. . .

Loki looked down at Daisy, who was peering just as carefully around the corner of the silent building as he. "You're certain your control is fine enough?"

"Yeah." There was none of the usual irreverence in her low voice. She kept watching the pack of guards filling the crossroads ahead. Going above along balconies and in short flight was no option; Asgard's guards were smart enough to look up. Around meant a long detour and very possibly more guards. The best route was here, past nine well-armored Einherjar warriors. And with six of them to manage, invisibility wasn't going to be the most efficient option, either. Thor preferred to cause no harm to men doing their duty. Thus, there was only Loki's plan remaining to cut them through. "Count me down when and I'll make sure they get the hint."

"A hint, Daisy. Small tremors. Please do not crack the realm before our enemies attempt to do the same." He went for black humor and got the barest grim smile back.

"You do the David Copperfield shtick, you don't worry about the rest of the special effects, 'kay? God, are you sure we can't just talk past them?"

"The Einherjar are granted their role for their unswerving loyalty to the All-Father and each may spend upwards of millennia in his service. They are forever fed and cared for in honor of this gift of their servitude, their families held high even beyond their deaths. Hearing that, whom will you defer to this day? The fallen, black prince who betrayed that trust of old, the golden prince who is this hour named a collaborator against the realm, or a king who, for them, may as well truly be their God?"

"You can just say 'no.'" She rubbed her hands together, listening to the rhythm of her own heartbeat to be sure she was focused on what she was about to do.

"The day one of you is truly happy with a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer from me is the day I die of shock." He straightened up, a slender hand rising to command a quick-moving illusion into being. Once he'd placed it, he began the count under his breath. _"One."_

Daisy tensed. Down the street, a handful of shadows began to form into humanoid figures. One of the guards snapped to attention, immediately spotting this other version of what they'd been set to watch for.

 _"_ _Two."_

Swords leapt into hands of the rear five while shields and spears locked together to guard them. They knitted together into a phalanx as they moved forward, all done in immediate, trained silence.

 _"_ _Three."_

Daisy snapped a trained gesture into the air, her concentration totally on the illusion of their own group running down the other street. The largest of those figures uttered a roar upon 'seeing' the guards coming, lifting something that could have been a hammer. All her focus was on them, and the earth underneath their feet.

The ground shook with a low, rumbling tremor as the ghost of that hammer came down in a warning blow. The guards yelled back, ready for battle despite the sight of the mighty warrior. As one, they plunged a charge towards the far end of the crossroads. "Now!" snapped Loki to the others. He thickened the shadows around them all to lower the chance of one of the guards turning back to notice.

Daisy came up last. As the guards reached the illusion and found it whispering away from them, she pushed her focus one more time and called a rolling wave to tumble them all to the ground. At least one yelled a startled cry as he landed, drawing Thor to look back first at the guards and then down at Daisy with more than a little respect. That got the irreverent grin back on her face as she caught up.

. . .

Thor studied the empty space worriedly, aware he could not actually see the rift. The last time he'd encountered Loki's pathways, it had involved a fast moving skiff and the nagging fear the man was simply going to dash them all to bits on the rocks in a fit of madness instead. This time he looked at a simple if wavering stretch of air all but buried in a distant nook well away from the city. Loki assessed it with a suspicious expression of his own. Thor held the unpleasant guess that while their last such journey had been dramatic but ultimately safe, this one was going to result in some form of a hard landing. He glanced down when the squirm caught his eye to remind him. "You yet hold Father's raven."

"I intended to release him. I've changed my mind. There may be some use there, I'm not certain. But we need tools in the hours to come, and this pair of croaking nuisances are absolutely that." Loki turned away, regarding Sif instead. "You're certain that's the plan you wish to follow? You might come with us instead."

"It is. I will stay." She looked between the two brothers. "Your warriors three were beyond the castle's walls when all changed. I'll find them where they've gone to ground. No doubting waiting for your word, Thor. You know the halls we've hunkered in before. So I'll bring that word in your stead – wait and watch, and see what else we may learn for you within the city before your return. And then." She smiled for him, her eyes sad and troubled. "Whatever we must do. We'll be ready."

"Good enough, good Sif. Steadfast friend." Thor reached out a hand to pull her in for a quick embrace. At least someone accepted his grasp. He smiled for her, even as she looked away quickly. No doubt concerned with the work to come.

Behind the mighty warrior, Loki shared a long, tired glance with Coulson that was filled with a multitude of things he could have said. Coulson shrugged back at him, then dug his modified crystal out of his pocket to toss it to Sif, knowing Loki still had his. She palmed it, her glance making it plain that she understood how it worked.

Fitz watched all this occur with a hesitant cross of his arms. "Okay, any idea where we're dropping?"

"Canada, I think. And about fifty, eighty meters in the air. There you go, now you know why I never bother to use most of these little paths. I would have vastly preferred the port." Loki glanced at the thinning place in a way that suggested his trained magical senses were actively at work, ignoring the way Coulson's jaw dropped in dismay. "Just hold fast onto Thor and remember to bend your knees when landing. It'll be fine." The next was muttered. "I think."

"Are you _serious?_ " Fitz blurted at him. In response, Loki grabbed the young engineer and plunged them both through without any further warning. A faint squeak of terror lingered in the air.

Daisy wrapped her arms around Thor's waist, shooting Sif a look of apology that could have looked a little more apologetic. She got a wry, understanding smile in response. "I call shotgun. And, so yeah, that was a yes. He was serious. Phil?"

Feeling more than a little reluctant about the coming drop, Phil put his shiny black shoe atop Thor's armored boot, bracing himself. "I hate parachute drills."

With one more look of farewell to Lady Sif, they fell through space and into Earth's cold, empty air.

. . .

Bobbi glanced into the back of the Quinjet, meeting the still-wild eyes of Fitz underneath the shock blanket. She returned her attention to the control panel, resettling her grip on the flight controls and checking the flight plan to get them all back to base ASAP after the drop recovery. A wide swath of Manitoba wilderness spread across the horizon, filling up much of what she could see out of the cockpit. "I guess we don't get to go back for the holidays, huh?"

"At the moment, you wouldn't care to." Loki's voice was a sour mutter from inside the dark cowl he still wore. The bird in the bag chose that moment to add his dour croak to his captor's. "Guess who comes uninvited to dinner?"

"You don't think Thanos is personally going to show up, do you?" Coulson resettled his seat's strap across his shoulder with a wince. He'd nearly winched his arm out of the socket trying to soften his landing on instinct, slamming into Thor far harder than he should have. Overcorrection. Common problem, still hurt like hell. He felt bad about the guilty look on Thor's face when the warrior realized what happened.

"Might not. Results are likely to be the same as if he were there." Loki met Thor's eyes. "Prophecy aside, if his legions come, then so has your great doom to Asgard's door."

"But who held that door open for him? It was, as we'd hoped, not you." Thor's expression softened, finding some solace in that fact. Asgard might be under grave threat, but his brother had not disappeared entirely into his years of madness and despair. Here he was beside the rest of these good men and women, trying to do what he could to alter the outcome of that threat.

Coulson caught his look, saying nothing.

Loki shook his head, feeling the same distracting gnaw as he had in the realm of the giants. The sense that what he was about to say might not be the truth to all of his subconscious mind. "I don't know."


	14. SETI at Home

14\. SETI at Home

. . .

Fitz shook his head so fast it was more like a twitch, trying to find a way to approximate what Thor was trying to tell him into the science he knew. He scattered the electrical diagram sketches, frustratedly raising his hands. "If I'd had the foresight, I would have asked for the books on Asgardian ham radio when I had the chance. I don't know what you're trying to get this to do."

"These frequencies _will_ tap into the galactic channels. It's just a matter of finding the right boost and the right pattern." Thor looked up as Loki walked into the briefing room. Gone was the familiar Asgardian tunic that made him look taller and more regally imposing. For now, he was back to those unassuming Midgardian clothes, almost passing for any other human in this place. If notably taller. In his thin hands was one of those simple tablets the humans used for their notes, and he tapped at it without paying much attention to their surroundings. "Our science works with harmony, good Fitz."

"Well, that's great when you've got a thousand years to turn your science projects into something that'll pass for art class, too, but my God, there's only so much I can piece together with what I've got on hand. I'm still astonished the damn crystal worked." Fitz looked up to try and get Loki's attention. "Can't we just redo what we did with that thing somehow?"

"No. Range is too narrow. That was a dedicated device, although you did well with it. My advice is think elsewhere. Instead of reinventing what he's telling you, try what you know first." Loki looked up from the tablet, his eyebrows coming together. "Aren't there some satellite networks you could fuss with?"

Fitz's eyes lit up as he snapped his fingers. "Arecibo. We've still got total security access. Moon bouncing might do the trick, plus some of the SETI programming is something I can modify. I can get a boost that way then narrow in on your frequency scans. Faint signal, probably, but there we go."

"Archaic." Thor straightened up, not intending it as an insult.

"But it'll work in a relative jiffy. Relative, meaning I've got to start right away." He tore the scratched notes away from Thor's hands, nodding furiously to Loki. "Should be transmission and reception both."

He was rewarded with a faint smile from the tall agent as the rest of the team filtered in and took their places around the table. Thor stepped away to take a place against the wall, watching his brother command the floor of the cool, ascetic-feeling room with an ease he seldom showed in Asgard anymore. "All ready to enjoy the bad news I bring?"

"How bad is it?" Coulson fiddled with a tablet stylus, watching him.

"No preamble. The All-Father is being manipulated by the illusion of his dead wife, a ghost intended to prey on his emotions and, through undermining his faith and belief, prepare him to embrace the concept of Ragnarok itself. Like any good warrior of that realm might." Out of the corner of his eye, Loki watched Thor drop his arms to his side in open horror. But he did not doubt or speak a challenge. He tossed the tablet onto the central table just in front of him. "I've already transcribed much what I've seen through the mirror of Munin's recollections, read it as you will. I will admit I've left out certain observances that were... more private. The salient information is complete. The document is uploaded to each of your devices."

"Holy shit," said Daisy under her breath, grabbing for her smartphone.

Loki looked at the rest of the team in turn. "You know why, of course, if you think a moment. Why I think you as well ought have this information. Why this comes around to Asgard first and through the hidden door. Why this plan holds worth enough to draw Thanos close. I do not know this for proven fact, true, but there is no other purpose it may reasonably be."

"The Tesseract." Thor was grim and still pale at the insult implicit behind Odin's use. "The gem that holds incarnate the mysteries of space itself."

"What I came to Earth for in the first damned place – here, I'll spare you all the awkward fact you're politely trying to not bring up. Save for what he already held, that was the key to Thanos's forward planning. With space itself unlocked to him, the rest of the infinity gems become only a matter of time."

"He doesn't have it yet, though." Coulson put down his tablet, rubbing at his forehead despite trying to find some optimism to offer. That goddamn thing again. No wonder Loki looked exhausted and horrified with the whole matter.

"May as well." Loki said, spreading his hands in near-defeat. "After the Bifrost's reconstruction, it was sealed away within Odin's vault. There are other routes in, but with him caught up in this bleak fantasy of the end times, all his controller must do is convince him to release it. The 'last defense of the realm' or some other ploy. It's where I would have started, once. The power within the stone alone is enough to end Asgard entire. The army is no doubt to ensure it – and to take what they can from the realm before the fall."

Thor shook his head at his brother. "The vault will remain sealed. I cannot believe he is that far lost among the shadows that he would unleash those artifacts he purposefully put away. We have time."

"Not much, and few answers as to the full nature of the plan in play here." Loki crossed his arms against the short black jacket he wore. "So our problem is rather large."

"Is this a bad time to screw around with your Ragnarok prophecy to try and make it fit what's going on?" Daisy looked up from her phone to study the look that crawled across Loki's face. "Okay, it is."

He followed up the look he gave her by giving Thor another one to match. "The story is being weaponized. That's not the same as it being an effective prophecy. _Regardless,_ it is philosophical dithering and solves nothing of our problems. Whoever our agent in the house of Asgard is, they're not going to be so stupid as to use the story as a checklist, they used it to open doors. That's all."

Thor cleared his throat, then decided to hold his peace.

Fitz looked up from his design notes, puzzled. "So who did this? Asgard's had other internal problems, right? Everyone does, god knows. Are there prior suspects?"

"All are accounted for, and all those lost in the last prison break have since been reclaimed... or found some other purpose." Thor shifted against the wall, leaving the obvious at that. "No Elf nor mercenary plagues the land, nor has for some time."

Loki stared over Fitz's head, all but hearing something click in the back of his mind in the brief pause after the engineer's words. Painfully slow, he turned to look at Thor, not really seeing him. "Lorelei."

Thor shrugged in an offhanded response. "She sits in her cell, harmless and voiceless. No more does she charm us against our will."

"...Does she receive visitors?"

Thor shook his head in a firm negative, studying the poleaxed expression on his brother's face. "Not even her sister in exile claims the right to acknowledge a kinswoman. No messengers, no single word sent."

Loki said a word Thor hadn't heard him use since their youths, a particularly ornate vulgarity the older Volstagg brought back from some long-ago battle with an incursion force from elsewhere in the galaxy. "I saw. I saw it plain as I strode through the prison, _thought_ of it even, and I didn't realize. I was too wrought over the mess at dinner and not yet looking for shadows cast so close." A moment of fury tightened the skin around his eyes, targeted for himself alone. "This is almost certainly Amora's handiwork, then. Her sister sits in the open and waits to draw the suspicious eye away. The only clue I've got; you say she receives no visitors and yet she looked to me as if she'd simply been waiting that eve for someone. Someone that could skulk the palace, no doubt. She turned away bitterly when I was not what she wanted. A thin theory, but I'll stand by it."

Coulson lifted his gloved hand. "Who's Amora? Sorry."

"A damsel of some renown in those sorcerous arts, an enchantress of great old lore whose skills are kin to the sister you know." Thor kept watching his brother. "I recall her, Loki. She had a fair eye on me – as did her sibling - but turned to you for a while instead before they then turned on us all."

"She _settled,_ story of my life, but kept her ambitions elsewhere," Loki said, still finding those old memories a touch rueful. He looked to Coulson. "Those ambitions were always vast and proud both, leading to that attempted treason. Together the sisters sought to forge armies against the throne, either to take it for their own or end it. Didn't make a poor attempt, either. More time, more alliances made, they might have created a real and lasting scar on Asgard. Amora escaped when the plan failed, Lorelei faltered and was held. I had nothing to do with any of _that_." His expression was firm, creasing in annoyance as Coulson stared back, deadpan. "Now, I may not know the route she would take, but there are many paths to Thanos's service. One of them oft through ill-advised desires. It's possible that's what's occurred here. Distressingly possible. And at Thanos's side, what you want... tends to become what _he_ wants."

"Okay." Coulson tried to keep his face as serious as the situation demanded. "If you're about to tell me this is gonna come down to an angry ex-girlfriend-" Both brothers stared blankly at him. He spread his hands. "Come on."

Loki shifted, the pinch in his face making it plain this was not a topic he was going to discuss overlong. "No doubt to your surprise, I don't maintain such ego in the matter. It was a long time ago and we didn't end on that much targeted hostility before I believe she simply lumped me in with the rest of her vengeance – don't give me that look, I say again it was a _long_ time ago. Well before my reputation went to Hel strapped to a black star. Her anger would best be with the resolution of certain of her plans... and certain societal natures that form much of Asgard's structure. At most, I was an afterthought." He shrugged, thinking of the best way to draw the conversation back to the field of possibilities before them, if he were correct in his realization.

"...Was the horse upset?"

Dead silence filled the room following Daisy's question as they realized what she was getting at. Coulson rolled his eyes and slumped in his rolling chair hard enough to make it creak. Thor looked blank. Loki slowly lifted his head and fixed her with a look so frozen that she started to giggle out of sheer nervousness behind her hand. "I'm _so_ sorry. I really am. I just wanted to kill the tension."

He studied her, seeing that she meant it. "I do believe you've properly taken it out back and shot it."

"Like a-"

"Stop now." He put up a hand, the last warning he was going to give and one more than he would have given anyone else. The tired expression came back. "All right, now there's a direction to look towards."

"We can't be gone from Asgard long." Thor straightened up. "We need a plan for when we get back – and a plan for getting back. You have another of those hidden paths home?"

Loki shook his head. "No. Nothing viable or safe, or I might not have been so easily dragged back to Asgard that once."

"Then we should have stayed!" Thor reached out to bang on the table, frustrated.

"Absolutely not. I know you; we'd have wound up doing an immediate gate charge or something else relentlessly hopeful with half of us dying outright. I have another way back in mind, don't fret overmuch at that. Fret carefully at what you intend to do when we return. First, we might have an idea now who's pressed the attack on the All-Father's mind. With that theory in play, we may undo some of what was done to the All-Father. I've some understanding of Amora's methodology, though she's no doubt practiced her skills along traits unknown to me. And we might find some way of pressuring her in turn." He looked thoughtful as he finished, already marking the idea that occurred to him.

"Grab up Lorelei?" Another shake of Loki's head answered Thor. He frowned, still grudging and not fully at ease with the way the room accepted Loki's tone of command. It occurred to him that this might well be normal for the humans. "True. If you're correct, she'll likely be released to her sister's side once they believe the situation is under their control. She'll be hard to corner. So, what then?"

"I'll muse on it. I may already have something in mind. The next step is whatever information we can gather before we _must_ return. Help Fitz with communications meanwhile, if you will. I've two purposes to that in mind – firstly, inform Nova Corp and anyone else listening in on the line about the _actual_ situation. Not only can we get some updates from them as well as through your warriors, but if this becomes truly dire..." Loki looked away. "There may be some need to gain assistance in evacuating what we can from the realm. Many of our people will fight to the last, but there's countless others that ought to be kept safe in case of the worst."

Coulson watched Thor turn red, cutting in before the upset dug in deep. He didn't like seeing the Avenger at a loss. "What's the other reason?"

"I need to make those arrangements for our return." Loki said, gesturing to him. "I want to speak with you more on that later."

Thor watched them exchange a look, Coulson's brow furrowing as he tried to puzzle out what Loki might need. "I think these good people have done enough, brother. Should we directly involve them any further?"

Loki reached out to pick up the tablet he'd dropped. He kept his voice calm and mild, belying the real fear that was starting to build inside. "If Asgard falls, _brother,_ and we fail to halt any ruin to rise from it, Thanos still holds Earth plain in his sights. For revenge. For another stone to wrest from its keeper. Odds rise he comes here next. And even besides that, if Asgard falls, what occurs to the rest of the Nine under watch?" He paused to look at Thor, ensuring he was listening. "Tell me in all sincerity they have no vested interest in knowing what results from these possible last days of our realm."

Thor had nothing to say to that. He looked troubled to his bones, drawing a sliver of sympathy from Loki. _No one wants to know their deepest fears are true, do they, Thor?_ He looked down at the tablet, trying to come up with some sort of viable plan.

Two princes, a handful of Asgardian warriors full of mistrust for him, and humans for distant backup. Little else to stop the end of a world, and all this against someone who he knew could be clever enough to adapt against what he might bring to bear. He felt freshly ill, a deep sickness worming its way through his guts as it had since choosing to brave Jotunheim for an answer. Answers, like the last time he'd gone to that place, he had never truly wanted.

. . .

Coulson caught up to Loki as the rest filed out of the room, Fitz all but dragging Thor down to Engineering to finish what they'd started. "I don't feel like waiting on surprises. What did you need?"

He allowed a wan smile, one that gave away more of his current discomfort than he would have once admitted to. "I need to borrow the car." The smile widened at one edge at Coulson's blank stare. "This is still technically a proscribed world to the greater galaxy and beyond. I had my ear filled by an angrily inconvenienced mammal with all the laws we broke touring back towards Earth after my trial. Not that he _cared_ , precisely, but I had to cover certain of his legal costs in addition to resolving the matter of his hire, once he was properly ticketed. An avoidable nuisance. The moon will do for a loophole, to please him and to meet that rather familiar ride."

"No." Phil said it flatly, brooking no argument from anybody on this topic. Much less a man that qualified as some sort of god. His face then broke into a grin, typically capable of finding the bright side. "I got two hands again. _I_ drive Lola."


	15. What the Eye Sees

15\. What the Eye Sees

. . .

Heimdall watched, cold in the depths of both his belly and heart at how quickly the things he saw and had not seen turned and twisted inward to become a new wound in the heart of the realm. He watched as the markets and grand streets of the neighborhoods turned suddenly, hauntingly silent as the people fled indoors to watch stone-faced guards patrol the golden avenues in search of Odin's whispered traitors. He could see the confusion on their faces and the fear at what may yet come, see even the guards whisper to each other when they thought they were safe, and all had questions about the source of their actions. Some even dared to question the king and his abrupt acts in hushed words, looking to the sky to be sure the ravens did not appear to observe them.

He knew where one still fluttered. If he focused, he could see the bird acting with relative freedom in the stronghold belonging to Loki's companions. Munin watched many of the proceedings that occurred as he flew along its halls, not unlike Heimdall himself. The one called Mack attempted to wave treats under his beak now and again as they crossed paths, but like his kingly handler, Munin was proud and easily offended. He only ate when the man turned away, then would flutter off again to harass whoever he chose. This was often Loki, who pored silently over notes and plans, and would toss other small treats over the bird's head to try and draw him away.

In other rooms beyond, Heimdall's prince and a young human composed messages and all three in their ways watched consoles light up in a dozen Nova Corp offices dotting the nearby galaxy as each found its destination. At one of these outposts, the stocky one named Rhomann Dey absorbed a missive targeted to him with a muttered _shit,_ readying his own new report to be sent up the line to his superiors.

The chain of information continued on without stopping. Heimdall saw Vanaheim's leaders go still at the dueling notices – Odin's decree of a great threat internal to Asgard, Thor's insistence that the claimed threat was untrue yet warning of an even greater evil building in the lie's shadow. He watched the tight faces of the Kree and the flickering eyes of space travelers cutting in on lines that hadn't been intended for their ears. And amidst the storming ice, he saw the face of Jotunheim's queen staring up at the sky as if she intended to meet his watchful gaze with one of her own. He did not know what he saw there in her eyes, could not name it. There was no clear pleasure at the word of Asgard's possible doom. Her throne room was under one veil – Farbauti kept her soul under another. As Odin did.

Odin, whose secrets Heimdall had not seen, for he had also been too close and bound by loyalty and law.

Heimdall looked away from the galaxy to contemplate. The Bifrost's gate was his to guard, and until Odin himself came to decry him or call him a collaborator with the princes once more, he would hold. He would not open the gate yet, believed he could not. Not without tipping the dangerous balance between the palace's orders and the frightened people, but he could watch and be ready for the time were there was no other good choice. Now and then he tried and tried again to peer close at the palace itself. Even he could not see into its depths, and it was realizing that when he knew he fully believed the word of invaders waiting inside.

In the streets of the city, Thor's warriors kept to the shadows and spread what word they could. Those confused people, noble and peasantry both, listened to close to what they had to say. As night drew close once more, many chose to trust in their prince and followed the warriors into closed halls to discuss plans of their own. If _something_ came, they would fight. Small councils were made, and street leaders that would not need to be micromanaged. All this from the words of one prince – though truly another's – that believed that preparation would be necessary.

Heimdall noted it all, ready to do what he could when he must.

. . .

The shimmering field around her gilded cage poured away, leaving nothing between Lorelei and the brace of Chitauri come to claim her. She stepped forward, proud and regal, hiding the disgust she felt at the sight of these foul, grey creatures her sister claimed were loyal to her. It was difficult to hold in the sneer when one reached sharp fingers to her throat to unsnap the muting restraints there, but as she felt cool air soothe the rubbed places on her skin where the collar and mask dug most, she found her hands flying to her throat instead.

Her favorite trick wouldn't work on these creatures. There was nothing in them for her to charm. For them, there was only war and servitude to their titan lord. From within their cyberwire helms they sneered and half-roared at her, beckoning up through a passage now empty of guards. No doubt Odin had put virtually all his men to the streets to watch for this hidden threat, still blinded to what happened deep within his own halls. Lorelei knew much of this. Her sister came many nights to gloat about her progress, about how easy it was to befuddle the grieving. She spoke a great deal about the future, and the power she intended to claim. For them both, of course. She was always careful to include her long-waiting sister in these plans, and took great care to she knew the costs.

And Lorelei sat there and listened with satisfaction, ready to wait for that hour they would emerge into a new galaxy marked by their combined powers. Were they not joined by blood? She looked down at her rescuers. They looked back up at her, still making those awful insectoid noises.

No all-speak could be possible from the throats of these things. Still, she regarded them with the best haughty stare she could muster. One born of long practice in long, silent hours in her cell with only the passing guards to glower at. "Why did my sister not come for my release?"

She hated the roughness and rasp of her voice, the disuse made plain in it once more. A chitter and jittering shakes of their heads answered her. Nothing useful. She rubbed one more time at her skin, resisting the urge to lash out with a little magic of her own. "Lead me to her."

Howls and smacking chitin instead of intelligent language, but they did as ordered. Up again into the light of day. Lorelei kept her head held high, ready to taste freedom again. And to meet her sister.

She refused to consider the old doubts, the rivalries, or the questions that formed when there was only solitude to feed a waiting mind. They no longer mattered. Now was the hour for revenge.

. . .

Amora didn't turn to look at her sister when Lorelei swept gracefully into the dark room forgotten behind old kitchens and other disused architecture. She studied the mage-mirror before her instead, watching for the flicker of some arrival inside the halls of the dead queen. At her fingertips were all the puppetry control she'd created and mastered over the last several months, the flickering spark of magic silent in the dusty air. The only sound was the tiny clink of the golden bangles she'd favored for centuries, delicate jewelry sliding up and down a slender arm as she drank from a goblet in her other hand.

Lorelei studied her sister's slim back, clad in the familiar green dresses she favored and with the cascade of rich blonde hair rippling freely along her exposed shoulders. Amora, in Lorelei's experience, had always been considered the prettier one. More skilled in most of the magics they shared, an enchantress of mighty trinkets and a wielder of great, raw power. But _she_ knew the charms best of them both. She felt her lips purse, doing her best to ignore the jealousies that always lay between them.

She had been caught. Amora fled to something akin to freedom as the guards gathered around her fallen form. But now this day they stood together again, just as Amora promised her over and over. Centuries of silence and then at last the whispered promise of revenge, a promise kept. "My sister," Lorelei said, still happy to see _someone_ again with her own eyes. The freedom of Midgard had been far too brief and only granted a taste of her own voice back. She'd taken a goblet of water herself before entering the room, softly practicing her voice before entering. She intended to be whole for this reunion and was pleased to hear the old melodies already coming back into her words. "I am glad to see thee with my own eyes once more."

"And you, beloved Lorelei." Amora sounded distracted, still not taking her attention from the mirror. "Come and sit with me. Watch. Old and bitter Odin comes soon and then I will whisper again to him of start of that last war he both dreads and craves. The city huddles, Lorelei. A few more words later in the wake of _their_ emergence, and the rest will be simple. He breaks almost nightly as I watch. Poor old man." The last words bore no sincerity.

Lorelei crossed the small room to take the cushion next to her sister, studying the face and not the mirror. "What words?"

"I feed his griefs for months and soon I will feed the fears he's always known." Amora smiled, now content. "How _sweet_ of Loki to make of himself the perfect villain these last few years. In the end, Asgard will always readily accept him as the source of their disaster. And Odin? Odin is well distanced from both his children now. He has forever feared the worst in his dark little boy, what will be different about this? Only that we know now what ugliness might be under the prettier face."

Lorelei felt her fists tighten within the folds of her dress, finding a new worry to grasp to. "But the rumors say Loki is not what he was. Even in the cells we have heard this. What if your plan doesn't stick to him, or what if he's still clever enough to dodge you?"

"I doubt these rumors, personally. But what does it matter?" Amora tossed her hair with a little laugh. Lorelei saw a trace of tension in it, those lines in her sister's smoothly beautiful face only she saw. Her dislike for the prince was a raw and living thing; the man yet another rival in a field she ought command alone. He had things Amora wanted, and declined more than once to let her take them. "It is easy to believe the worst in others, and he held Chitauri of his own to command once. To see them consume Asgard ahead of the destruction I intend? All will think of him first, despite whatever protestations he could utter. No one thinks of we sisters – why would they?"

Finally her sister's eyes drifted to meet hers as she still spoke. "It is as it has forever been. The warriors never look to the women as a threat, for they bother to see so little behind our smiles. Even sweet Sif is an afterthought to the people, a whimsy of their prince. The dead queen a pretty thing to be grieved, some symbol to rend their hair over. That you faced only prison and me trapped to exile for what we tried to do is astonishing. Even sad little Loki accepted disowning and the shame of the galaxy's courts for his latest crimes, though I admit they let him live. In contrast for our lesser status as barely noble, they should have executed you. But alas for them, we little women." Amora's eyes went back to the mirror. "Charm, our last, first, and most enduring weapon in this realm."

Lorelei suppressed a shudder at the offhandedness of her tone. The years had forged sharp steel inside her sister, so sharp that she sometimes wondered if Amora knew how and where she cut. "And when we are done here, our reward is certain?"

"Thanos cares not for the shape of his ally but results alone. I will bring him his prize, Lorelei, and you alongside me. We will be held high, for we will do what the other did not, and after his great war we will forge things anew to our taste." Amora began to smile again. "I am certain. Now, watch. The shadow draws near. Watch me play him."

. . .

Odin let himself into the queen's chambers, his lone eye scanning the alabaster scrimshaw tiles of the stone and enameled floor where he walked. He did not lift his head to look beyond the balcony to behold a kingdom held in fearful silence. He listened to his thoughts instead, and listened for the whisper of a ghost. When none came at first, he settled his broad old form onto one of the queen's low benches, rubbing at thighs that ached a little more every day. Many millennia of life behind him, and fewer chances to die in battle as his forefathers did. The remnants of the future seemed wrapped in fog.

Frigga could always read his thoughts on his face. Her ghost had no less skill. _"One more war will draw close. In it, we will all burn and begin again. Your honor is eternal, my love. You do not need to fear for your soul."_

Odin muttered soundlessly into his beard at first. "They are still gone. Thor's warriors lurk the streets, I know that but not where. The brothers themselves are hidden from my sight, and one of my ravens gone with them, I think. Old One-Eye, upon a waiting throne."

 _"_ _No doubt they prepare in each of their ways for the last battle, whatever side they think they're on."_

The muttering continued. "So much does not make sense to my old mind." Odin's grey hair shook, hiding his face as he continued to study the floor. "The one cleaves to his _avengers_ and claims just war anew on behalf of mortals. The other took to the shadows but serves another kind of human warrior just the same. And these mortals they love come to me and say to fight despair. ' _We will always try,'_ says their little lordling to me, this man who gave that second chance to a mad, broken boy who could never repay that gift. The man clings ceaselessly to _hope_. These are the lessons my lost sons fill their heads with." The grey head lifted to regard the ghost, the question plain on his face.

The ghost stared steadily back, pained and trusting. _"It is the way of the young race to supplant their elder. Did we not ourselves, so long ago? The humans have ambition and woo our children to their side. The lessons they teach are a ruse to purchase sympathies, not unlike a child's bribery. It is a fine thing to feel wanted, and so we are bought by this eagerness."_

Odin's thick brow furrowed as if dissatisfied. The mane shook again. "I am old, my lost Frigga, and I do not trust. I did not trust Thor's fury and I have not trusted Loki's claim of change." His head lifted further and he looked across the balcony to the twinkling lights of the city, wondering where these dreads in him were truly coming from. "I am old and age makes strong men frightened. As does Her touch, that last doorkeeper. In battle we can learn to not fear the lady Death. In the dark, she seems crueler. I wonder sometimes what it is I truly think I see, crawling at the fringes of the light."

He saw her hand drift close to his face. _"The prophecy-"_

"May well be true." Odin looked up to watch his dead wife smile comfortingly. "We will know in due time." He smiled back, the muscles in his face feeling tight under his long beard. The fingers drifted close before the image faded away into the purpling night.

 _. . ._

Lorelei watched her sister's mirror dim, careful to not point out that the conversation had not gone entirely in accordance with Amora's confident statement. There was still a trace of the king left in the dimmed eyes that she had seen, other questions near to the old, dry lips. All men fought, in her experience, when the trap's edge drew close enough to see the pit before them. Still, it would be better to be gentle with Amora's pride. She pitched her voice carefully. "Does he doubt you? Are you certain he will act according to plan?"

"Even doubts can be useful, although it would have been nice if he'd pushed himself to despair enough to... well. That would have been convenient, and I could have done much in the mess that followed." She shrugged. "At the very least, he's bought me all the time I need. I don't require him to get into the vault, though it would be simpler that way. Whatever's he got in place, there's a way past. Always."

Lorelei inclined her head, still soothing.

Amora snapped her fingers, sealing off her magic and turning to regard her sister. What she felt regarding this last possible waver in Odin's resolve was kept to herself. Her face showed only a total lack of doubt. "Let him fester over human concerns if he likes, for this quiet moment. He will follow what he's been taught when my Chitauri burst forth to establish a hold upon the city, and he will listen to his dead advisor. The legend is buried too deep in the realm's soil. He will embrace it."

"And when will that be?"

Amora favored her little sister with a pretty smile instead of an answer. Again, Lorelei felt a chill flutter along her spine.


	16. You're Gonna Carry That Weight

16\. You're Gonna Carry That Weight

. . .

Loki heard the heavy footsteps the moment they started thudding through the carpeted floor of the outer hall and internally braced himself for the sound of knuckles that would eventually rap against the frame of his door. When they came, he set down the pen in his hand and leaned back in his chair. "As you do well see, it's open."

Thor peeked in around the frame, his face furrowing under his tied back blond hair. He'd borrowed another generically human jacket at some point and shifted his weight from one leg to another, looking both under dressed and more than a little cautious. With some bemusement, Loki realized that this time the elder prince had taken a closer step after the younger's lead, in an attempt to fit in with the surroundings better. It probably put Fitz at a touch more ease down in engineering, at least. "You tend to favor your privacy."

Loki jutted a thumb towards the long couch set behind his desk and against the back wall of his private quarters, indicating the raven ruffling and preening his own breast feathers in silence atop a throw blanket that he'd draped along the couch's back. The blanket was speckled with ignored kernels of popcorn. "The ravens never did care much for that privilege. Rude little bastards, the both of them. I understand he's already found himself banned from the engineering bay for what he did in front of Agent Mack."

" _Caw,"_ said Munin. He cocked his head to give both princes a disturbingly hostile look.

"And to Hel with you, too." Loki shot the bird a look of his own before glancing back up to his brother. "Let him complain and let him watch what he likes. I've offended his regal mien enough, I suppose, and it may be to our benefit for him to observe what we do." He looked away again, but not before noticing something in Thor's hands. "Some further notice from the galaxy?"

Thor glanced down, lifting up the tablet to display it in both his hands. Mortal technology could be fragile sometimes, and he chose to be carefully aware of his own strength here. "You've one message, yes. The rest are reports from the warriors that I thought you should examine. Hogun in particular is being quite detailed. I have deployment logistics to study and somehow he's got a contact inside the palace where, they learn, even Heimdall is seeing little."

"Hogun always did save his words for pen and purpose. As for the palace, Amora can veil a watchful eye as well as any sorcerer could. Including myself." Loki considered the rest. Anyone still inside the palace could be most at risk now, but also in a position to help them get in when the time came. If they could get even that far. He filed that away.

Thor cut into his thoughts. "You're still certain it's her?"

Loki shook his head, but not in a denial. "It is not something I can prove, exactly, but that glimpse of Lorelei... the more I think of it, the more I see." He looked up to catch Thor's raised eyebrow, flicking his hand in response. "Familiar anger, familiar disappointments. A bad joke after all, putting her in my old cage. Now the punchline comes around, the curtain rises, and nobody gets a laugh."

The tablet in Thor's hands kept bouncing as the warrior fiddled with it, thinking. "You see parallels?" Loki shrugged, his face making it plain he was unwilling to discuss that further. Thor offered the tablet in one hand, leaning into the room further to be sure Loki could reach it from his desk. "Regardless, look for yourself. The palace is all but empty of guards. If what you fear below is to come to pass, they're at their least defended within."

"This isn't the All-Father's most logical set of moves. He's been thoroughly goaded towards his actions. At least it seems like the vaults retained their guards for now, as did the healing halls. Interesting." Loki swept his hand over the tablet to find the message for himself Thor mentioned. There it was, wrapped in the mercenary batch-codes the Ravagers and similar outfits used to short-send location and time data. He had his ride, with rendezvous set well within the general window he had in mind after calculating his end of the commute. The small mammal was dangerous but curiously reliable when he knew the paycheck was guaranteed. "Then again, he's been set to chasing ghosts and prophecy. Such emotional fanaticism tends to draw aside more calculated thought." He set the tablet down again, thinking. "Not that I'd _know_."

Silence carried through his room long enough that for a while he thought Thor had left. Then his brother finally stepped over the threshold of the doorway to take a seat on the couch, well away from the glowering bird. Munin picked his way carefully across the back of the couch to get another foot's worth of distance from the Asgardian. With a soft snort, Thor picked up one of the kernels of popcorn and bounced it off the bird's beak.

The bird looked Thor dead in the eye and said, low and distinctly pissed off, _"Kk-Caww."_

"That is no way to talk about his grandfather." Loki gave Thor a smirk at the look he got. "I'm joking. I don't speak bird. But really, that was probably a fair interpretation given tone."

Thor still sat in silence, regarding the bird and regarding his brother. He picked up another kernel to roll it between his fingertips. The idle fidgeting of someone in discomfort. "I've another question for you."

Loki arched an eyebrow at the tone lacing through Thor's voice, careful and still curious both. He picked up his pen to twirl it easily between his fingers, trying to make his dodge look less a dodge. "Consider setting it aside. Time won't last us forever and I've paid part of it by establishing when we must leave here. I took your heed and went for sooner rather than later." He looked back down at Thor's information from Asgard.

"You've a plan?" Nothing changed in Thor's voice.

"I've some general notions, but they're little better than a checklist of goals at this stage. I hope to have better well before departure, but despite my protestations I'm going to have to accept that we may be doing a great deal of adjustment once we return to the scene. If I'm right about Amora, we're in for a game of countermeasures. The information you bring helps. If anything makes a difference here, it's going to be that knowledge. That alone was worth our temporary withdrawal." Loki pushed his hand through his thick mop of hair and stuck his elbow on the desk, regarding his distant brother with weary bemusement and resignation. "Never mind. You've got that damnable tone – bad as Coulson, really, won't let a thing go if he's got his teeth hooked in tight enough. Ask and condemn us both."

"What happened to you after you left Asgard?"

Loki laughed, low and bitter. "Oh, Gods, that's _terribly_ vague. Which time? For me the Bifrost's door does tend to revolve."

"I meant after Heimdall and I tore you from the throne, the illusion revealed by a false word and a glimpse through Heimdall's careful eyes. You were weary, but you ran. You ran and not long after disappeared from his sight entire. I could not follow. No one knew anything, nor saw you again full until the end of some young and doomed world. And in the wake of that, much to all's surprise, you went back to Earth. And stayed. Why to all of that? What came you to this path, this little set of rooms in Coulson's house of your own will? Why do you hold the confidence of a human man whose honor is impeccable?" Thor spread his hands. "I _see_ the change, but I don't understand it and so have not yet trusted it."

"See." Loki pointed the tip of the pen at his brother, using it to illustrate his point as he talked. "That's the sort of expanded question you should lead with. Boxes in your point well on several sides, doesn't let your target wander overmuch."

He got a long, careful look. "And does it find an answer in its target?"

Loki shrugged, passing the pen between his hands. In a moment of whimsy it went from being a pen to a tiny iridescent snake. He let it drop to the desktop, deliberately allowing the illusion to crack by gently tapping its pretty triangular head and hearing the tiny _click!_ of the pen's button. The scales cracked back into plain blue plastic. "I made a mistake." He didn't look up at Thor's little noise of disbelief. "Clearly a staggering understatement." He nudged at the pen with a fingertip. "I actually made a series of mistakes, culminating at one point into what was to be an absolutely glorious finale of not only ruining my own life but ensuring I would be damned and bound for all eternity to things you cannot comprehend. And you were there for it, actually."

He caught Thor shaking his head. "I don't understand."

"I'll explain a little if you insist, but you need to listen. Not the full tale I'll tell – we've no time for that. Do you actually want to know the answer to that vast question of yours? Do you _care_?" The last word came out more brittle than he intended.

Thor watched him, something burrowed deep into his face to match the thing that wormed through Loki's own. "I should have silenced Fandral sooner. I apologize for that as well. I knew my friends had hesitations and fear, but not that they would attack openly."

The thin shoulders visibly tensed for a moment as the heavy silence began to fill the room. Thor watched the raven resettle himself in the stillness, fluffing his feathers before preening back down. The desk chair creaked as Loki turned away. "It was to be expected," he said.

"Loki-"

"I ran because it's something I do well. I ran, because I didn't care for any of the futures laid out for me – not the All-Father's gambit to hold a frost giant child for Jotunheim's ransomed fate, not as the mislaid second prince, not for Thanos's plans, and, ultimately, not for the results of my own." He stayed with his back to Thor. "I read considerably as I pretended to be a king. I realize that sounds painfully obvious, but Odin's rest came seldom and he kept to long hours. A schedule I adhered to. I looked for other ideas, escape routes should my current plans fail. Should I be... freed from my own conspiracy, if you like. When I fell again from Asgard, that meant I ran towards those other options. Looking for a way through, to break my destiny. To find the future I believed I was owed."

He heard Thor resettle on the couch behind him, the prince's eyes on his back an almost physical sensation. "So it was I found my way into a trap. I was bidden by a robed plaything of fate to take a chance on a path, to look for a new destiny that way. The path led to Earth, through these humans, and so I thought, very well, I'll play on their good natures and see if I can find what I need to get what I want." He turned his face slightly, but not far enough to actually look at Thor. "You can say ' _typical._ ' I won't mind."

"I'm not going to say it." Thor's voice was quiet.

"It was easy at first. They knew what I was and what could be, and still they let me in. Gave the benefit of the doubt, while holding all their cautions close. They let me try, knowing full well it was probably all a lie, and yet they allowed that chance. And of course I betrayed that trust, eventually falling fully into that trap laid for me by no one but myself and baited with the lies I thought I wanted to hear. A closed circuit lay before me, no new road but old chains tied to dead, cruel gods." He had to pause for a moment, thinking over the memory. "But it wasn't all a lie, either."

"The matter in New York. The emergence in Greenwich that smelled of things beyond living ken. That was you?"

"Me." Loki scratched a hand through his hair, listening to the quiet curiosity behind him. "And we ended it. We, I suppose that's the key word. My failures, all, but the humans... they determined they would help resolve the matter with me. One more chance granted, partially I think because when I had another opportunity to run, I didn't take it. It would have meant leaving someone in harm that had done me none at all. I found I couldn't."

A soft noise came from the raven as he murmured for his own reasons, lifting his beak when the air filtration system started to hum just at the edge of their hearing. Loki shifted in his seat, the words on the tablet screen no longer making sense. His mind was utterly on the old memories, the words he spoke careful and deliberate.

"As I say, it wasn't all lies. The book's path was a lie, and the damned shade my own lying self, yes. I managed to get away when I found a fragment of truth. Broke my destiny after all. It cost. The knowledge and its lessons had a great cost, no small part of which was the realization that I couldn't have what I wanted so simply. There's no cheating your way into a new start. No method to wipe away what I've done. The past is there. It all happened, and despite any reason or original good intent, it's a part of my history. No small piece of it continues to be my future. Inescapably so. If you ask me your question in the hope that I've found _redemption_ , well, best look away and find your disappointment. It's no goal to be found. Maybe after my last breath, if there's an accounting then after all. I've met Death Herself a time or three and she's quite nice, actually, but she doesn't talk about what's beyond the final door."

Loki found he still couldn't turn. "Did find change, though. Did manage to find that in due time, and not through a book. So I'll accept that as my name and title now." Another faint, acidic laugh. He felt tired again, knew it crept into his voice to be heard plain. "The small God of Change and the prince of nowhere. It isn't easy, for what it's worth. Your Fandral. Your friends, all. They have a right to their fears and mistrusts. They may forever. And I can't truly lash back in my own defense, because they'll always be watching for the moment the monster shows up again and all them changes undone. Well. Whose fault is that?"

He shut up, realizing his chest felt entirely too heavy. He rubbed at his forehead and set the pen aside, no longer interested in fidgeting. What he wanted was for Thor to take what he'd asked for and go. There were things here that had not yet healed, scars that were more than physical. "Is that enough? Anything more you want from me? I don't have much else to give."

"They trust you here."

"And I've come to trust them, after all. You want that, too?" He couldn't give the words the heat he wanted. They dropped like old sighs instead.

He could hear Thor starting to stir. Soft clothing rustled as the warrior stood up. "No. I want to save Asgard. Can we?"

Loki shook his head from side to side, slowly. The truth was plain but weighty. "Despite these plans I work at, I don't know. We've few real resources against an enemy prepared for us in both power and mind. We risk an unleashed infinity stone coming onto the field in hands possibly ready for it. The All-Father is in an unpredictable position. It's not good, Thor."

He tried to not wince when Thor put his hand on his black-clad shoulder. The prince's voice was oddly gentle. "But I have my brother. There is hope. I will cling to that, and if fortune can favor a change of fate, then perhaps it will favor us, too."

There was nothing Loki could say to that. Silence returned to the room and calmed the raven that watched the pair with its gleaming black eye, but now that stillness held something rather like peace.


	17. Catch a Ride

17\. Catch a Ride

. . .

Lola didn't precisely idle, not with the sub-engine and its unusual new power source installed under the cherry-red hood next to the main engine. Idling would have meant the puffing of the exhaust system or a gentle ticking sound as things heated and cooled. Lola _hummed,_ a neat little thrum of tangible power that Phil could feel through his one good hand where it rested on the wrapped leather steering wheel. He still grinned like an idiot, replaying the last quick donut turn he'd taken over Sinus Honoris, a bay-like feature of the moon's Sea of Tranquility. Lola's handling was so quick and seamless even on the sharpest turns that he was able to enjoy the sight of gallantly armored Thor in the rearview as he scrabbled for the oh-shit handle above the window. The raven, back in his bag for now to keep him slightly relaxed, slid down to rest against the other door with an audible thump.

Loki, riding shotgun in his old armor of green and gold and black, looked amused at it all. The expanded control panel flickered its operations lights across his face as Fitz kept relevant information streaming to the upgraded car. Much of the handling was automated otherwise, and all of it came about via the expensive schematics and design notes of a genetically modified spacefaring mammal improbably named Rocket. "Civilian spaceflight within your own private grasp, and you're doing NASCAR tricks with it."

"Hell yes, I am." Phil leaned forward when a particular twinkle in the vast field of stars above caught his eye, moving unnaturally in the deep black sky. "That looked right."

"It did. Thor?"

"I'm ready." Thor let go of the handle, flexing his hand and making sure he hadn't damaged the car. "This is to be the pair you've hired before? I heard the description at the time but not sure I believed it."

The twinkle in the sky began to turn yellow and gain a recognizable triangular shape as it hurtled towards their parking place on the moon's surface. They were stopped at the edge of a line between light and dark, hoping that would help ensure no lucky observer on Earth would wonder what the hell a 1962 Chevy Corvette was doing in space. The approaching craft began to slow to a crawl, then dropped with surprising elegance next to Lola. A light on the dash lit up to inform the driver – pilot, really – that an atmospheric field was being generated. "They are that pair," said Loki.

Thor craned his head down to peer at what was emerging from a tall airlock door set in the side of the bright yellow vessel, his face slack with surprise. "Where do you find these people, brother?"

"I've had a colorful few years." Loki's droll tone got him a look. "I don't make fun of _your_ friends for looking oddly."

"...These are also friends?"

Loki snorted in an immediate dismissal. "Of course not."

The giant tree-man crouched down to peer into the driver's side window of the car. Gleaming black eyes lit up happily when he fully saw Coulson in the driver's seat, the bark mouth spreading into an open smile of childlike delight at the sight of Loki as well. Coulson waved back as the tree tapped gently at the window, still beaming. Realizing that meant everyone was sure it was safe, Coulson rolled down the window for him. "Hey, Groot!"

"I am Groot!" said Groot, reaching up a hand to place it carefully against the half-opened glass. A tiny vine and its emerald green leaf snaked along the edge of the window, the leaf itself shaking as if there were real wind to finish the rest of his greeting. "I! Am Groooot!" He leaned into the window, nodding for emphasis. The sweet smells of fresh peat and new growth suddenly filled the car.

Loki tried to nod politely back, realizing with some heat that Thor was smirking at him from the back seat.

. . .

"Nova Corp about shit bricks when the guards sealed the spaceport. Guess that was the first notice everyone got; 'bout a half dozen cargo ships gettin' a generous two-minute warning to take off pronto or get ready to eat snacks in the port lobbies until whatever bug crawled up Asgard's ass crawled back out. Corp tried to intervene by talking starlane and hauler rights over the transpo but that apparently went down like a dead Badoon's nutsack. All-Father guy gets his way and damn the laws of the local galaxies. See, this is why everyone else gets twitchy about you people behind your backs." Rocket slapped efficiently at his console as they hovered, occasionally lifting almost all the way out of his seat with tail as counterbalance to watch Coulson doing a few more tricks along the moon's surface before setting course back to Earth. "Heh. I coulda charged that guy double and he'd a been just as happy. Gotta say, he's got the moves down. Probably do alright in a short-range hopper in a pinch."

Loki settled back in the seat behind Groot as they started falling deeper into the blackness of open space, perfectly content to never let the mammal know that he'd paid most of the bill himself in a fit of bemused whimsy. It wasn't like a human was going to be able to scrabble up that much worth in galactic credits. "Don't worry about the port, all you need to do is get us into the lower atmosphere."

"They got shields." The doubtful way Rocket said it outlined how strong they were.

Loki smiled as he adjusted one of his golden armguards, no humor on his face. "Atmosphere, Rocket. I know you can punch in."

"Craziest damn Asgardian." Rocket punched at something with a balled up and hairy fist, his little clawed feet dangling off the pilot's seat as they accelerated. "But alright, man, you keep payin' and I'll keep lining up to do your stupid jobs. Do not ask me to party up for whatever you got goin' on when you land, though. _I'm_ not that crazy and even you can't afford the hazard tax I'd drum up for it." He straightened up and turned to fix bright, beady eyes on Thor in the seat directly behind him. A hairy arm draped across the back of the chair while Rocket looked him up and down. "You really the other prince, the like super-famous one with the humie girlfriend and the hammer?"

Thor's eyebrows rose and he crossed his bare arms across his armored chestplate at the challenge. "I am Thor Odinson, prince of Asgard and the lord of thunder."

A thin black claw pointed at his side. "That the blingie hammer?"

"Mjolnir, forged in the heart of a dying star."

Rocket turned away, his interest fading with his questions answered. "Probably a super-dense prime-meteoric alloy with some magey crap layered in for shine and show, big whoop. Anyway. Swear I thought you were gonna be bigger the way everyone talks. Hell, pretty sure Drax is bigger'n you."

"I am Groot," said Groot. He sounded like he was trying to be patient with his friend and partner, the open face flickering a look towards Thor that was apologetic and long-suffering both.

"He still a big guy, Groot, he can take a little non-adorative banter." The hairy paw flicked at him.

"There is no offense here. I've had better." Thor gestured towards his brother with a jerk of his head and a grin, unfazed by Rocket's dismissal. "He's taken his best shots at me for centuries."

"We are absolutely not going to start arguing in the backseat of a spaceship while there's a possible apocalypse on," said Loki, looking straight ahead at the back of Groot's wooden skull. At his feet, the bird-bag wiggled anew.

"Oh, please do. I want a story to tell the others." Rocket said, tossing the words directly over his shoulder with some new interest. "What'd he do, semi-big guy, pick on your armor and then scoot before you could hit him? Looks like somebody welded tiny dinner plates to your chest, not that you asked me."

"I did not ever do that, but now that you mention it..." A quirk started at the corner of Loki's mouth.

"I _am Grooot._ " The tree turned to look chidingly behind him.

"You'd understand if you'd grown up on Asgard," Loki told him.

Thor snorted at the exchange. "How many times did you cheat your way out of what few chores we bore by tricking me into them instead? And I recall I mucked stables three times in my birth-month the year I was fourteen only to find you'd hared off to the far fields for an easy day alone in summer's sun."

The pale face creased into obviously faked woe. "Oh, no, thrice you woke too early in the morn out of thirty days marked. What burdens we carried then. I wash my own dishes now, Thor, I can discuss the merits of individual soaps. Laundry day is Sunday if I'm not currently _living in a shipping crate_. You get to slum in Stark's fancy new tower when you're on Earth. Stable-mucking. Thrice. In your fourteenth year." He put his hand on his leather and gold chestpiece, rolling his eyes dramatically. Groot stared down at him with gentle disapproval.

Thor ignored the diversion. "One of them was my actual feast day, Loki. I smelled like manure at breakfast, so direly I nearly turned away. They made my favorite meal that morning, and there I was all but too ill to enjoy it." Rather than old angers, Thor was all but laughing at the memory. "You were a cagey brat and you never got called on for those antics."

Loki leaned back, still looking straight ahead. "I did not ever tell you directly to insult the stablemaster's prized goat while he was in hearing range. You did that all by yourself. And besides, you still ate three plates full of breakfast meats and went to the mech fights that eve. If you were nigh sick, it was on sweets bought at ringside."

Thor started to study the ceiling of the ship as he quietly chuckled, staring at individual bolts and weld-lines in turn. "And how did the stablemaster just happen to walk into, not the stables I note, but the training corral as if dramatically cued?"

"You know what, I think we should heed Groot. We should be focusing on what's ahead, finalizing those short-term goals we have on landing." Loki smiled easily up at into Groot's face, his voice light. Groot tapped at his own forehead, shaking his head. In the pilot's seat, Rocket's tiny shoulders were jiggling.

Thor laughed outright as he kept staring upwards. "You got away with every thing you did. Either we couldn't prove it, or Mother found it too amusing to properly punish you. Besides, how _do_ you punish a skinny brat who, when told to go to their room, can't help but look totally delighted? You had a thousand books in there or more before you were _nine_. You would skip sleep to read these dull monstrosities and then you'd sneak out at night to go get more. The library tenders were beside themselves."

"And _you_ used to hide my current reading pile when I wouldn't immediately come to weapons practice with you." Loki shot him a look. "You tore the cover of my copy of Magistrix Tuvorald's notations on complex metaillusions doing that, and then you did worse. I fought for that book. It was in perfect condition when I found it and now to this day it's _dog-eared._ "

"Oh, my Gods." Thor rolled his eyes at the exasperation in his brother's voice. "The beards of our forefathers and the war-fields of the dead. That book – you used to force me to listen to passages from it. That book could stun a bilgesnipe into eternal sleep. There was a reason it was rare and it wasn't because everyone was dying for a copy."

Loki made a _tch_ noise through his teeth. "You have no taste nor mind for the esoteric."

"If _that's_ taste then dear Gods in their mercy, let me be coarse eternal. You can keep it."

Rocket was softly wheezing into his control panel. "You're both still brats. Big ol' Asgard, apparently fulla bickerin' kids all the way to the top."

"I _am_ Grooot." Groot puckered his face as if to blow air through nostrils he didn't actually have. He looked at the pair in turn, folding his arms across his chest in authoritative judgment so earnest that both brothers started to snicker. Groot frowned until they both started to settle down. " _I_ am _Groot._ "

Thor's face twitched, threatening to grin again. Loki elbowed him. Groot heaved a gigantic, long-suffering sigh and turned to mutter soundlessly at the depths of space before him instead.

"What Groot's also tryin'ta indicate is that we're about five hours out, so if you mature and righteous noblemen wanna try to get your act back together, now's the time. Way you sound, Boss Paycheck, you got something in mind for me." Rocket lifted a foot to kick a pedal set high under the controls, double-checking his route calculations as they scrolled neon-bright across his display. "I'm not kidding, I'm not gonna engage ground-level. You punks pack a hell of a wallop."

Loki cleared his throat. "I'd prefer you get out of attack range but stay close enough to the planetoid to act as an ad hoc local communications center, with a line out to the galactic channels. I'll have to borrow some of your comm sets. Once we're on the surface, we're probably not going to have easy ways to coordinate with split groups otherwise. Your ship's the best hub we can get on short notice."

"Ehhh. That I can do, I s'pose. Nova Corp likes us to feed in anyway, get nervous for some reason when they don't know what me'n Groot are up to when we tear off on a contract." Rocket shrugged, sounding completely baffled as to why the Corp might not trust him.

Loki refrained from rolling his eyes, which was a good thing as the mammal spun in his seat to regard him. "Okay, I'm gonna mention this because you pay kinda well and I don't wanna see anymore planets try to blow up while I'm in the same sector – I got a crack in through the spaceport lines, can bump-read all the feeds that way. Not gonna get much usually except angry haulers sharing rude jokes while they wait, but I can probably get a full relay system going myself, not just local, not just managing your little party pals. Won't know what I got till I start picking up transmission, but I can convert that all to fatline and transpo if need. Really cut in the Corp on what's going on, if it goes bad for youse."

Loki regarded him, considering the tactical use of a broader comm range. "That... would be remarkably helpful, Rocket."

"Yeah, well, don't spread it around." Rocket gave Groot a beady eye as he shifted his hairy butt in his seat. "Stuff's for my own reasons. Ain't a favor or nothin'. Besides. _That_ guy."

By the way Rocket's tone lost its humor in favor of low seriousness instead, Loki knew immediately who he meant. He sensed Thor shift in the seat next to him, hearing it as well. "Thanos."

Twitching black lips pulled back along white fangs at the sound of the name. "I know you're listening in on the lines, Prince Paycheck. You hear how it's gettin' out on the verge?"

"Yes." He said the single word in a tone soft enough to carry several layers of import. "If this plan to gain the stone succeeds, it's going to get worse. Quickly."

The air inside the ship seemed to thicken as Groot went still. Rocket talked for them both, scratching idly at his arm while he stared at the void ahead of them. "He don't got that big an army, considering his rep. Big enough. Guess he took a few losses here and there. You can claim some of that. Barely matters, unfortunately. What he got, he moves it right, a planet gets mowed over in days anyway. Stones or no stones. The hope people got left is, he's out there at the rim and Nova's in here. The heavy hitters have been movin' around keepin' eyes on him. He don't pull close these days, not after Ronan got shot down. He playin' tight. So. Define worse."

Loki glanced out at the stars himself, noting the brightest among them as the ship fled through space. Wondering what the universe would look like with that spark gone. "Once he acquires a stone, it will need to be tamed. Caged, even. Then, with this particular one? He'll get inside. The entire fleet is his to place as he pleases. Drop them anywhere, at any time, and you'll get no notice until you realize your world's sun has been blocked by a dreadnaught's eclipse. That's if he chooses to _play_ before his next goal. I don't need to speak to what that is."

Groot's head bowed, his familiar words coming out in a muttered, worried sigh. The next sound was Rocket's claws tapping regularly on the console while he thought. The mammal had seen a stone in action before, Loki knew that much. "Do _me_ a solid, princey."

"How's that, then?"

Rocket leaned into the controls without looking back. "Don't screw this up."

. . .

Lorelei ran up the short flight of steps to the balcony off the chambers where they hid, already seeing her sister's ankles in view at the top. The sounds of heavy weapons fire continued to pop and sizzle through the crisp air of Asgard, echoing within the narrow hall that wrapped the dirty stone staircase. "Do you call for your soldiers?"

"No," said Amora, studying the yellow speck in the sky with narrowed eyes. Her voice was distracted. Lorelei lifted her head as well to try and make the shape of the thing out. Was it a ship? It had to be, but it was a type she had never seen before – garish yellow and spiky-winged, agile enough to dance just out of the range of Asgard's low-atmosphere countermeasures. It was difficult to tell for certain what its goal was, but each dodge seemed to take it a few marks lower each time. Soon it would all but skim the water along the edge of the city. "Another breaches the realm's borders. Timing, Lorelei."

"Then who is this?"

"I'm unsure." Amora's study broke into a smile that dimpled into airy innocence. "Well, that's partially true. I'm all but certain at least one of our princes is on board that vessel. They _do_ tend towards quick reprisals in that family. I wonder if _someone_ figured out my game. Again we come to one of our little tactical impasses. He never did confess that he'd betrayed my plans back then, but he was always smart enough to see a few steps ahead. And, I suppose, he at least played at loyalty once upon a time." Her voice turned musing and she looked over her bare shoulder at her sister. "Well, that can be mitigated. We'll simply move more quickly, to ensure no complications arise. I can handle _them_."

Lorelei set her jaw. "What can I do to help?"

Amora's hand flickered up to touch her sister's face, tracing a single tip along the curve of her jaw. "Such an ugly expression, Lorelei." Amora smiled brightly as her sister flushed in that familiar old shame. "Masks, my dear. You give away so much with each twitch of yours."

Lorelei looked away, still hurt.

"You can help me by ensuring some of the few remaining palace guards know their _new_ loyalties. I know you've gained most of the patrollers already. Your voice was always your best feature and you've tamed it well." Amora's hand came away again, ignoring Lorelei's second flush at the backhanded compliment. "There's a remaining brace of five or six honor guards still in the lower levels, near the vault. I don't care about the rest, really. If that's a prince – or both, for a wonder! We might rate an untrusting alliance between two bitter souls!" She looked delighted at the possibility. "Well, then we need to act efficiently before they can do much to interfere. Loki will have plans, whether he's here personally or no. I hope they'll be dashed before these arrivals touch ground, but that's less important than acquisition."

"And Odin?"

"Timing, Lorelei. I'll see what's come to Asgard, and then how best to present it to my advantage. Oh, I _do_ hope it's both." She clasped her hands together, smiling up at the fire in the sky. Jeweled bangles on each wrist clattered together in a musical chime, drowned out by the sound of engine roars as the vessel cut a tight turn in the atmosphere not far from the palace. "One more grand family gala before the lights go out!"


	18. The Long Sounding Horn

18\. The Loud Sounding Horn

. . .

Volstagg hunkered his stout form under an awning belonging to a blacksmith in their small new alliance, watching Hogun's lightly armored back as the much smaller warrior scampered up to get a better vantage on the invading vessel. It swooped low overhead just as Hogun dangled from a finger's worth of grip, chased by sparking lines of weaponized energy.

Neither of them were concerned about the city's defensive laser artillery scraping close to the rooftops of the city, much less the taller spires closer to Asgard's center. The warriors and engineers at those strategic holds would never willingly endanger their own populace unless it was absolutely the only thing standing between them and disaster. Volstagg crinkled his nose at the acrid smell of burnt air left in the wake of the air assault. "Gaudy blasted thing. It's them, Hogun, I've seen that ship before. Right on time. Do you mark their landing point?"

Hogun looked down, his sharp expression asking the question for him. _When do YOU go to the spaceport?_

Volstagg flapped his hand, dismissing Hogun's prying stare with a mutter and the flush of the chronic useless liar. If he were lucky, his past mistake would never come back up. Hogun tended to prioritize by nature, ignoring the incidental. "My question's more important."

"Shoreline. Two leagues." Hogun turned away to double-check his estimate, squinting as another bright line of focused energy cut the sky only to hit nothing. "No skiff to catch them this time. They'll drop close instead." He gracefully slid down from the high wall to join the burlier warrior in the shadows of the brick and steel building. He lifted his hand to count off the minutes it would take them to find and provide cover for the returning princes, as Sif had commanded them to – four minutes. He quickly jutted his chin towards the narrow alley ahead. If they left now, and at a fast clip.

Resettling the giant axe on his back with a roll of his shoulders, Volstagg grunted his assent. "After you, my grim friend. I'll keep up."

. . .

Thor hung onto the left lip of the ship's open door, eyes narrowed in his only defense against the rushing wind as he waited for just the right moment in which to jump. It wasn't going to be easy; the lower the ship went the faster the anti-aircraft defenses spun up. Behind him, he could hear the hairy creature screaming his weird war cries as he deftly maneuvered between the tall, elegant residential towers and across patches of rolling hillside. He'd already patched into local comms to boot, picking up coded tactical information that Loki was quickly translating for him from where he held onto the upper end of the door.

Loki knew the _strangest_ people, Thor decided. But these companions certainly knew their jobs. Even if they did not hold to a particularly elegant vocabulary.

 _"_ _YEAH, YOU FANGNAPPIN' DOOFUSES, WHAT, YOU LEARN TO AIM IN A BLACKOUT? I GOTCHA FAST MOVIN' PRIORITY TARGET RIGHT HERE! SUCK MY FURRY ASSSSSssss!"_

"Northeastern pulse artillery banks have you almost in range," came the far more sedate input from just behind Thor's shoulder as the ship's console beeped out its newly stolen information. "They're desperately lower-powered, however, range is close to a hundred meters less than the other set. Means we've a blind spot coming up. You can dive right in and then back out, although they may compensate and get aircraft of their own up within another minute or two if they judge you annoying enough. I advise we get this done before that."

"I am Groot?"

"Well, I _tried_ to shuffle the necessary engineering manpower around during a quarterly reorganization when I was in charge, but who knows where that got tied up after my eviction – is that what you asked?"

"I am, groot," came the distinctly negative-sounding response.

"No one ever cares about basic administrative necessities." Thor heard Loki sniff and resisted the urge to chuckle at his beleaguered woe. "What _did_ you ask?"

 _"_ _EAT MY ENTIRE RUMP, YA GOLDEN DEUCEROCKETS!"_ Rocket yowled coarse victory laughter as the ship took a hard angle drop, lights sparking far overhead in a clear miss. The smell of approaching water began to fill the ship and he tossed his next words over his shoulder to the brothers in a much more businesslike voice. "He wants to know if you're gonna get hurt. Him and his bleedin' tree-syrup heart. Like, I don't think aimin' for the bushes is gonna slow you a whole lot."

Thor watched the shoreline grow closer still, unconcerned. "We are warriors of Asgard."

"That means it's likely going to be unpleasant, but we'll walk it off and pretend nothing's the matter. _He_ will, anyway. I intend to complain about the short-term shooting pain in my leg at every opportunity, because I've had a rotten few months. And then walk it off."

"I _am_ groot?"

"They're not gonna – YEAH YOU THOUGHT YOU GOT SOMETHIN' DINTCHA? - get turned into paste, Groot. They'll be fine. Yo, that blind spot's on my grid, ten second countdown. I'm gonna do a hard spiral down to getcha closer for the sake of sap-for-brains here, try to not upchuck yer mead on my ship."

Thor felt Loki shift behind him. Something about this scenario struck him as immediately familiar. "Five seconds," said Rocket. "Two."

He realized why. "Loki, don't you ev-"

Loki jammed his knee into Thor's back and then shoved _hard_ as Rocket snapped the ship into the targeted drop range. The rest of Thor's word was ripped from him by the rushing wind of the ship. "Payback," he said, singing out the single word with absurd cheeriness. Then he dropped out, too.

. . .

Volstagg huffed along close in Hogun's wake as his companion was already all but caught up to a squad of backup warriors. The men must have been called in to position close to where Hogun estimated they needed to be, which meant that the last scream of craft engines they'd heard must have been the drop. Hogun's spiky morgenstern mace was already in his hand and he promptly dropped the guard lagging at the rear of the group with a soft tap of its butt atop his golden helm. Hogun snapped a look back at him to tell him to hurry up, ignoring that the guard's partner now whirled to seek revenge for the rear attack.

"Hogun!"

The lithe warrior dodged the spearman's lunge, going in for a hard strike to the guard's throat that he knew the man would rear back to avoid. When he did, the throat-strike turned into a one-handed grapple as he swept the man's leg's out from under him instead. Sif maintained Thor's line of reasoning, declaring that no extreme use of power was to be used against the realm's peacekeepers while they got into position. Knock them out by any means they could manage, but do no lasting harm. One of Thor's short messages from Midgard earlier indicated they would be only harming themselves in the long run.

No one quite knew what that meant yet, but an order was an order.

Hogun whirled as the rest of the guards turned to deal with the problem at their flank, pointing at Volstagg with his mace. In the distance a shockwave rumbled through the ground, followed by a sudden storm of sparking electric light. The mace in Hogun's hand twirled in an old, familiar sign. Volstagg grinned, showing all his white teeth through the red and brown of his long beard, his axe ready in his hands. When the guards lined up to take a step towards them, Volstagg let out his very best bellow of warning and began the whirlwind.

Hogun easily leapt out of his way, making sure the guards had room to scatter when they got an eyeful of the gigantic tornado of a man charging their way with an axe bigger than some men raised high in his hands. One was too slow, getting clipped by the hefty butt of the weapon and dropping out of the fight with a thud. That did it for the rest, breaking and scattering as they realized who it was they faced.

Odin's greatest guardsmen all, but a mass of Thor's warriors together – and Thor himself, now visible at the top of the beachhead ahead? They would retreat and gather again. And maybe, Volstagg reckoned with a heave of his breath at the end of his spin, they might think more carefully about their next order given.

Thor spun Mjolnir down as the lightning crackled and began to fade, casting double shadows around him. He shifted his weight to his other leg with the tiniest wince. "I had them, but it is good to see thee again, friends."

"'Course you did, good Thor. But it's always fine manners to ensure our prince a pleasant return." Volstagg elbowed Hogun with a chuckle as all the smaller man did was grunt. The shadow split and the humor on Volstagg's face drained slightly when he realized it was both princes that had returned, not just one.

Hogun stepped forward, regarding the other prince with his usual stoic blandness. He didn't look surprised by this development. "Sif wants a regroup. Then I can get you into the palace." He glanced up to Volstagg, as if daring him to say something untoward. Volstagg shrugged, realizing that more allies on the ground was always better. And he'd been wrong before. Let Hogun speak for them both. Would be wiser that way.

Loki glanced at Thor's friends, then lifted the bag in his hand to undo its fastening. Munin scrabbled his way out without waiting for his captor's help, his feet and beak unbound. But rather then fly off just yet, he crawled his way up to Loki's armored shoulder to pick out an acceptable brief perch. He squawked and waggled, making damn sure the prince knew how he felt about his recent treatment and regarding the gathering with an avian stare of distaste. Then he began flapping his wings wide before launching himself into the air with a final series of loud calls. Loki sighed and dusted a couple of tiny feathers off his shoulder, catching Volstagg's odd glance at the departing raven. "It's a long story. Where does Lady Sif hope to meet?"

Hogun turned to jut his chin towards the luxury markets. "Merchant friend. Below. We can avoid the guards down the path I've scouted before."

Thor stepped forward and clasped his hand on Hogun's shoulder, glancing up as the skies cleared. Rocket had slipped out of the atmosphere safely, leaving the guns with nothing to shoot at. "Lead on. Quickly, now. What lurks must know we've come home."

. . .

Sif traced a finger across the holodisplay she'd rigged in the basement of the jeweler's shop, looking at the rough-guessed patterns of the guards as they flowed across the city seeking her and her friends. With the sounds of air combat fading away indicating how much time she had left to think on the next stage of action, she focused entirely on what lay ahead.

Fandral stayed on guard near a narrow entrance that led directly up to the street and, for a wonder, mostly stayed quiet. She'd chosen who to stay and who to dispatch to Thor's welcome, and so decided to stick herself with the fencer rather than risk him starting yet more antagonism with the princes. She didn't know why nobody else seemed to grasp it would be both of them returning, but then, she didn't waste much time questioning why they'd accepted her temporary leadership meanwhile either. Perhaps by the time they arrived, the man would have gotten it through his head that keeping his mouth shut would be the wiser course of action.

Perhaps not. "Sif?"

She tch'd through her teeth, her focus now distracted. She looked up from the display to stare at his back. "You're better company when you're being silent, Fandral."

"I know. The sky's gone quiet, but something's wrong." She could hear the creak of his leather boots as he crept up a handful of steps to take a better view of the horizon. There was an unusual seriousness in his voice. "The banks are powering down completely, they're not going to standby. That's not procedure, they'll take half the hour cooling before they can spin back up."

She finished his thought for him. "And if the invading ship returns, that leaves only our own craft in the sky... Our defenses are at least halved."

"What's the All-Father up to?"

The missives between the realms sped across her mind and she blanked the display with a bang on the table. Her next act was to grab up her sword and shield from where they lay against a support pillar, strapping them on quickly. "Not the All-Father, Fandral. Damn!"

Her words were well-timed. First there was the sound of air hissing and shrieking as a great many _things_ took to the air. Then, once more, carrying across all of Asgard from the terminus spire of the Bifrost, the Gjallarhorn sounded its long and sonorous warning of danger.


	19. Emergence

19\. Emergence

. . .

There were few left on Asgard's street this close to the coming eve, with most people choosing to stay close to home and well away from the windows as Odin's soldiers marched the lanes and avenues of the city. Still looking for this mysterious threat their king threatened and their princes both. They looked out, among the people and the sky and not within their own core, and all were frightened and didn't know fully why. So it was a minor blessing that there were only a handful of immediate screams as the chitinous black-grey ships and their squealing cargo roared out from somewhere underneath the center of the realm; a burst of alien poison lancing its way out of the heart of that great sea of gold.

The Einherjar were too well trained to freeze as the new threat rose behind them, but handfuls were caught out without cover and without covering fire from the main artillery arrays. They scattered for better position, a few enterprising warriors taking unorthodox paths from the ground to higher terrain, looking for a way to get on the invader's level. Many others died outright as the Chitauri began to crater the ground as they passed overhead, the small craft's weaponry more than enough output to make up for their manual weakness. The Chitauri themselves stuck to their weapons and vessels, shrieking unintelligibly but with more than enough intelligence to keep them coordinated through their neural hive-network. They knew enough to understand they would be cannon fodder if they went to ground against an Asgardian, so they kept to the air and its chance of superiority instead.

High atop a mead hall set against a residential tower, a single armored warrior screamed the war cry of a man who knew his own death had come for him and didn't fear it. He launched himself full towards a low-slinging air-chariot, a golden spear held high in his hand. The bluish pulse of energy from the front of the machine burned away most of his torso in a split second, but he had enough momentum and relentless drive to plunge the spear – and himself – through the attacker as his final act of retribution.

The air-chariot lost power instantly, ricocheting off a wall and taking out two other vessels as it went down. The aliens in the rest of the squadron screeched furiously, drowning out the roars of the gathering guards below as the first line of their own air defenses took flight. Sixteen golden skiffs, launching out from four different hangars, converging in to engage the locust-like mass already starting to darken the sky. The only fortunate outcome of the ground-to-air engagement with the earlier invader – the pilots and their crew were ready to go.

Golden spires reflected the dangerous dance of dueling beam weaponry, the skiffs specializing in short-range bursts of pure red heat that cut across the returning near-purple fire. Almost as agile as the air-chariots, but thus far badly outnumbered. Still, they pressed the attack, trying to divert the invaders away from the central residential neighborhoods. The fields could be reclaimed and businesses rebuilt. To a soldier, they knew the real worth lay in the people. Two skiffs went down within seconds, taking a tactical plunge at the heart of the oncoming swarm and costing the enemy dozens of ships.

A small troop of four Chitauri ships cut underneath a skiff headed right for them, aiming directly for a golden tower marked by carvings of their Aesir ancestors. Blue light snapped along the base and soon the ground shook as the home tower began to crumble. People fled out of what remained of the base as best and as fast as they could. Many were still too high when the attack came and could not flee through the fire and smoke. From a few of the windows the unarmored younger civilians did what they could to fight back, throwing things out at their attackers. Others began chains, trying to slide their children down the already sloping side of the tower. Even the young could be durable enough to possibly survive. It was going to be their best chance.

From out of halls and even the residential buildings, the small bands that claimed their allegiance to Thor and his warriors over Odin's confused guards poured out. With weapons in every hand, they ran to the armored groups to fill their ranks as best they could. With the Chitauri in the sky, Odin's vague threat now had a face they could stare into and rebuke and they focused hard upon that task. They would hold the streets while others fled.

In the artillery banks, broad-shouldered dwarves in the livery of the palace engineers fled through the halls with their enormous cargo; enough ice in each load to try and cool the anti-air weapons faster than normal. That came with risks as well, but every minute was going to count and so they chose what would get them back into the fight quicker. The second wave of skiffs took off, barely enough to create a new defensive line against an enemy that appeared to double every few moments.

The screaming in the streets was now beginning in earnest, voices mixing together in fear and rage both.

. . .

Odin gripped the stone balcony of Frigga's dead silent chambers hard enough to numb his fingers, his one eye watching the emergence of a doom he believed he had prepared for. The sight of it instead gave him only an open, crawling horror that shook its way through his bones. The defenses they had weren't enough. The banks had been all but sabotaged with a single, stray order somewhere in the chain of command. And how had that come about? Not by his word. He intended an honest defense against the end. Not this.

Not this.

He lifted his bearded jaw with a tremble of his old rage moving along its edge, recognizing the shape of the enemy that stood before him. The warnings he had known, had heeded, even though one source was his troubled stolen child. The warlord at the edge of the galaxy and his avarice for a power that should remain beyond all creatures of flesh. They were _his_ pets, these Chitauri. So was that the shape of his ending shadow? No honorable war come to bring the end of Asgard, but the treachery of that distant Thanos slipped in through the hidden door. From below his own _keep_. His throat turned to ash and acid.

 _"_ _And who at the reins, my king?"_ Frigga's dead voice came in near a sob. _"I have fully los-"_

"Silence," whispered Odin, cutting her off. His voice was strangled and harsh. A thick hand curled atop the balcony, pounding at it a few times as he thought. This was not the end he'd imagined. The reality of it crawled into his belly, sour and stirring old emotions into new power.

 _"_ _Our griefs are so many,"_ said the ghost, trying again. The voice came closer now, just behind his ear. _"I know this cannot be easy to behold."_

Odin watched as a chariot shot blue fire into a small crowd of running Asgardians, his teeth beginning to reveal themselves from the depths of his beard. There was an enormity here to be seen, a thing he did not want to accept, nor comprehend. But he realized he had to try, because for what he would do next relied on what he could bear. His voice was quiet. "You, of all people, then. You, too, believe Loki falls once more. That all that he has done and said, as ever, is lies."

 _"_ _They have served him before. They must serve him now."_

Odin closed his eye, sagging hard against the balcony. He wanted none of this. Not this truth, nor the weight it carried. "I did not see. I have one eye that sees so much, and still I did not see. I did not trust, but I forgot. I forgot." The last came in a whisper meant solely for himself. "I forgot, in my pain and grief, that I also must not blindly trust myself."

 _"_ _My king..."_

He raised his voice in controlled anger, his words accusing. "My wife never gave up hope. To the end, she believed there could be change in Loki. She who would circumvent my angered commandment to see him one more time, who knew when to heed me and when to follow her own counsel hidden from my eye. What I behold, what you say _may_ be true. I cannot trust that broken boy, even as he advises me to think carefully in all matters relating to himself and Thanos. But I could trust my wife, and what you say now is _not_ what she would have said. At last you falter and remind me of all I have truly lost. That is the last victory you will tear so easily from me." His face crumpled, his last words hoarse. "And I show myself shamed by my weakness, taken by this illusion and by my own willful wants. Go from me while you can. And know I will see you hunted, you _thing_ that wears her face."

 _"_ _Do me a favor, then, All-Father."_ The shade carrying Frigga's voice became low and cruel, a tone she had never used with him. It was an alien sound in those lips he had once known well. _"Do me one kindness, for our time spent together. Shove thyself from that balcony and spare me the effort."_

In the darkest part of his heart, it was a consideration for the cost of his failures. Instead he opened his eye again and turned to see her gone. No more ghosts, he resolved. No more of that. "Guards!" he called out, his voice almost its old roar. He thought quickly. There would be at least two left to him, set at the entry to these chambers. The rest he realized he could not know. _Someone_ had given the wrong command, and now these monstrosities held claim over his sky. He immediately suspected their next goal and found some comfort in the great seal he'd laid upon his vault's door. Sparing comfort. The end could still be too close.

The All-Father remembered old distrusts well and brought those memories in to arm himself, a reflex born of a warrior's years. It was time to use that rusty instinct. In the chambers just below rested mighty Gungnir, the spear of office. Though he was faltering, weary, and shamed, it would not do to leave his land without a king. Even if he'd managed to trap himself in another's snare.

A sound reached his ears, both them still fine enough to hear a whisper. In the sky, two ravens winged low towards him, cawing and cackling their greetings. Twin black-feathered brothers – and by the cries, one with memories to reclaim. Odin spat a curse, readying himself for what his scouts would tell him. Very well. If that last war must come this way, then he could – would – go down fighting.

As legend prophesied.

 _. . ._

Loki swept his hand over Sif's holodisplay, absorbing the newest data with a glance. While Thor stood at the center of the group in the stoic and ready manner of a commander, it was to be his own voice that spoke plans for them both. Thor's friends were thus far accepting the arrangement without complaint, and the few subjects and civilians that had joined the rag-tag team on their way to the rendezvous appeared to have no major interest in the appearance of him, the _other_ prince. He hoped that would last until the worst of the danger was over. "The Chitauri are a distraction. We need to keep focused."

"A gods-awful one, you ask me," said Volstagg in a disapproving rumble not far from Thor's side. "A distraction meant to slay our people where they stand once safe in their homes. We fail them if we leave that aside."

"I know, and I agree. The people should not be sacrificed. But there is much more at stake here. Even this may not be the worst to come if we do not hurry." Loki looked up and pitched his voice lower, trying to soothe the upset warrior. It didn't do much, but Sif continued to regard him with the calmness of someone ready for battle. Good enough.

"Will there be those dread leviathans, you think?" Thor turned slightly to search his brother's face, relieved to see the first shake of his head. "As much as that's good news, why?"

"No clear purpose and their commanders will know we know their weaknesses. The leviathans are costly tools and only efficient when used right. Thanos has yet thousands of them to spare, true, but they're troop carriers and best for frightening a populace. We are not the best target for that tactic, we'll make him spend dearly for their deployment. He believed he would have more by now, I think."

He allowed a grim, unhappy smile before continuing, incapable of finding joy in that small victory. It had cost dear, nor was it him that paid the worst of it. "So we get the expendables instead. And I could find a way to disrupt their network, given a little time and Rocket's comm hacks." That got him another glance from his brother. He allowed his grin to become lopsided and a little wry as he worked with the display to overlay some of what he'd learned from Rocket up in his geo-stationary orbit well out of the battle's range. "I think you know I don't ally with _anyone_ without figuring out how best to cause them chaos if I am driven to leave. Their network's hard-crypted and insulated from nearly all external sources, but not invulnerable. But again, that's unfortunately the secondary problem."

"What _is_ the plan?" Hogun allowed one of his brief questions, its tone adding that he felt they should be readying, not talking. Vehicles screamed overhead, drawing his watchful eye towards the jeweler's hidden entrance. As buried in the narrow lanes as they were, the worst of the battle stayed away from their current location. They all knew that wasn't going to last. Meanwhile, the fast alliances the warriors had made while the brothers were gone were trying to herd people to safety with or without guardsmen assistance.

"Flexible. Primary target is still gaining entrance back into the palace and securing the infinity stone by any means necessary. I need your route for that, Hogun, whatever method you have in mind. They've got the tunnels I'd use infested by now. I've got a secured communications system online for all of us and you're to damned well use it." Loki looked up as he heard the sound of an air-chariot slammed into a stone wall at top speed, sneering in open dislike. "We're going to be going in a lot of directions in an awful large hurry. First. Sif."

She lifted her chin to regard him. He nodded to her. "Take a warrior of your choice and a handful of these good people. See if you can get the spaceport back online. With the guards busy, you'll be able to commandeer the area handily. According to Rocket there's over thirty ships stuck in port, a fraction of whom are armed and we can press to join the fight. Call in Nova via official channels, Rocket will help you. If he doesn't for whatever reason, remind him who's paying and that I can and do still get a mite tetchy."

Sif nodded. "And the rest?"

"If they're fragile, get them out. If they have room upon their vessels... get some civilians herded towards the port."

Her eyes widened slightly at what he implied, the edges of that worst case scenario. "Fandral, you're with me." She glanced over at him, her hands unconsciously checking the security of her weapon straps. "Work your tongue and your charm on the spacers, for a change."

"My lady." Fandral shot Loki an unreadable look, but said and showed nothing more than that. Together they marched out, eyes carefully kept on the sky.

Loki looked back down at the rough map as the pair departed, thinking and trying to not dwell on what could happen if their current allies decided his plan was not the one to follow. "Thor, we're forming two groups to hit the palace directly – we'll split once we're inside. Barring immediate problems, find the All-Father. He's got the easiest access to the vault, and all access to its countermeasures. With the bird winging his way back, if we're _lucky,_ Odin will be angry and informed enough at this point to actually listen and do something helpful for you. Regardless, he's the key whatever outcome we face."

"Is _that_ why you let the damned thing flit around Midgard?" Thor furrowed his brow at him.

"It is. While you're doing that, I'm going to cut around the back way to the vault floor to find and deal with his 'handler.' I'm still operating under the assumption it's Amora, with Lorelei at her side. By now she's probably picking out methods of forced entry. If I'm right, we'll know by the time we get to the palace and find a bunch of adoring guardsmen blocking up our path. Regardless. All of this may have us end up converging quickly near the stone. This hinges on its security remaining intact by the time we arrive." He sighed, running his hand through his hair. It could all go badly, fast. "Now, this is a rough plan. I had better, but I also assumed I'd have to toss much of it once they made their play. Having seen it, they're not going to wait long to complete their goal. We're going to have to keep agile... and if I'm right, don't listen overmuch to stray words in a pleasant voice."

"Hence remaining in communication." Thor nodded to his brother. "Hogun, you'll be with me once inside. Volstagg, remain with Loki. You're to cover him."

The burly man started slightly where he stood at the head of a group of armed young men, his face caught in a visible wince. "You certain, good Thor?"

His hesitancy drew a considering look from both brothers. Volstagg flushed. "It's not that. You know – nevermind. Ignore me, I'm a prat." He flapped a beefy hand. "For Asgard."

Thor kept studying his friend, then let it go. "For Asgard."

Loki shook his head, then lifted it again to study the lithe Vanir warrior with his arms crossed against his thin chestplate. "Hogun. What am I walking into? Who's letting us in the door despite all that's arrayed against us?"

Hogun allowed one of his tiny, humorless smiles. "Eir." The grin showed teeth at Loki's look of genuine surprise. "We communicate through her assistants. The healers will never stand for what's come, and the guards seldom take notice of what _they_ do."

A black eyebrow arched at the stoic's near-monologue. "See, this is why I always liked you. Don't even care if you detest me, at least _you've_ got the mind for forward planning." He got a shrug in response. The display went blank with another wave of his hand. "Thor?"

"Let us go and save our people, as best we may."

Loki inclined his head, drawing his brother's eye. "For Asgard," he said, trying to give the words as much forceful hope as he could muster.


	20. As Eve Approaches

20\. As Eve Approaches

. . .

Eir beckoned the girl close, keeping a watchful eye on the lone guard that patrolled through the hall. Her naturally angular face tightened, the serene elegance that was her mark of office set aside for deep thought. The man didn't look quite right to her, something a hint too slow in his gait. A man with his mind forced elsewhere. Neurological, she marked it. Probably temporary, likely spell or medicinal. It reminded her of things she'd seen before, mental interference with a number of countermeasures. That told her a great deal about the situation within the palace elsewhere. She'd already set some of the others to arranging quick cures that didn't require the soul forge bays, although they'd still require time and recovery. And if those weren't enough, there was always the risky but expedient thump to the skull. The aftereffects were, in her house, treatable enough.

The four guards that kept camp within the healerie itself, in contrast, were bickering with each other when they thought no one was watching. Their eyes were on the windows, watching the chaos increase outside. Eir knew the type. Younger guardsmen with things to prove to their oathmakers. They thought they held a milksop duty, watching over a handful of women trained only to heal. They wanted to go to their brethren outside and fight properly, like men.

Well. She'd ensure they got the fight they wanted in due time. Their oaths meant they obeyed Odin above all, but here in the halls they would obey _her._ First she'd have to prove the other guards she'd seen were a threat. And then, she was going to have to get the side gates opened before Hogun arrived. Here was a critical step towards that. Once the patrolling guard was well out of sight, she turned her attention fully to her returning assistant. "What did you see?"

Her assistant cut a quick curtsy and got right to it. "They've four blocking the main gate, two at the side near the stables. Blessed be we, there. _Six_ now set at the entry to the vault floor, mum. Prison is empty, I did my duty and made sure the few in the cells were fed. Two should still be above with His Majesty if they've not left his side."

"They will not have. And they will retain their loyalties, I think. Like ours."

"All of the ones I've seen, save the king's, are the same as the patrollers. Ten of those circling this section of the palace by my reckon, too, all half-addled looking. They had no eye for me, mum, acting just like you've told us. They're bedazzled, like it doesn't matter what's going on outside. And the rest are out there, fighting the maddened sky."

Eir nodded approvingly to the girl, then beckoned her away to go rejoin the others at the alchemical tables. Two at the side. Simple enough, though if they were entrenched it would still take time to dig them out.

A roar of irritable fury came from the windows deep within her sanctum as the sky lit up with fire from the embattled skiffs. Eir nodded again, this time for herself. Good. They would fight when pointed in the right direction. She turned to examine the halls beyond one more time, thinking over her next move.

. . .

Lorelei searched the faces of the guards as they looked only towards her, making certain that her hold over each was firm. Each one felt the trace of her fingers along their prickly jaw and each had eyes only for her, no room left for even the jealousy of another's attention to her. Her charms were strong, but not easily made to hold forever. For now, though, they were hers. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Amora's skirts swish back and forth along the stone floor as she assessed the mechanisms keeping the enormous vault door at the end of the long hall closed fast. With Odin's anger freshly alight, Amora wasn't going to get in that way. By the almost feral look on Amora's face as she studied the set of seals made of magic and powerful machinery both, that delay wasn't going amount to much.

She could rage, her sister. She merely ensured she raged prettily. "I suppose I've got Loki's past antics to thank for this as well. Tch. Whole ridiculous family at odds with each other, and everyone else pays the price. Families." Amora tossed her hair over her shoulder, looking to Lorelei to soften her words. "I can rely on you, of course."

"Of course. My sister." Lorelei gave up her best soothing smile, doing her best to not dwell on her sister's screaming fury when Odin had caught her out on her mistake. Mercurial-quick were her moods. From fury to loving sister, and back to the ire.

It was Loki that had her fire up now. Damnable _Loki._ As ever. Always. Traitor, the knife in the side, the fair-weather ally, and the loose knot in the family's weave. It always came back to him.

Oh, Amora had been beside herself with frustration over the revelation over who had been veiled behind the mask of Asgard's king since the matter in Svartheim. That had been the first visit, in fact, the pleasure Lorelei felt at finally having a visitor set aside for Amora's sputtering anger at the shattered ploy. She hadn't cared about Lorelei's news of strange, malleable Midgard. Hadn't cared about her temporary escape. Not a word that the hidden Loki was in position to let her sister loose again in one of those acts of whimsy he was sometimes known for and then did not – but that he'd pulled off a traitorous feat against the royal family Amora never managed.

And then there was that other rumor. Not even Asgardian at all. That had put even more of a sneer on her face.

Now merely his _name_ had been enough to set certain of her plans awry.

There was a series of shattered mirrors and scraps of glass left behind in her wake to tell the tale of what Amora thought of this. But that was simply her sister, in necessary competition with all around her. Even Lorelei herself. Was that not what sisters were for, to better each other in all ways when the world fought back against them? Lorelei put on her smile again, lifting her palm as if offering comfort directly. "The guards remain in our keeping. As you see, the-"

"Oh, who cares for the guards. Most will die in the streets before night envelopes the city and the rest not long after, should I succeed here." Amora sniffled, ignoring her sister's abruptly dropped hand. "These few will be cannon fodder, like the others. At least they'll be out of my hair until it happens."

Lorelei licked her lips, then let it go. She was only angry, Lorelei reasoned. Matters drew to a close, plans always caused tension towards the end. A soft inhale, controlling herself. Someone to offer a cooling balance, and though it was not her strong suit, she would try. For sweet Amora.

It was understandable that she was high strung. After all, look at how their last plan had turned out. "Amora."

Lorelei didn't like the sharpness of the look she received in answer to her near-whisper. "I need to open this damnable door," said Amora.

"Yes. You're going to need power to do it. Enough to blow the seals, enough to contain what may be knocked loose in its wake." She reached her hand out once more, trying to connect with the sister she lived without for centuries. Instead of charm, she offered her honesty. "You'll need my help. You have it, you know. You always have me."

Amora's blue eyes glittered towards her like glass shards. "We will always have each other, against all else. You remind me, Lorelei, of what I require most."

There was something else in her voice, something she misliked hearing. Six hundred years in varying cells while Amora fled their failed conquest. The memory of over two hundred thousand days of solitude ticked at the back of Lorelei's skull like seconds on a timepiece. Each recollection begged the silent question – _was Amora true?_

Lorelei put on her smile, the brightest one Amora loved to see in her most, and buried them all back down.

It didn't matter, anyway. Only what came next.

. . .

Fandral tossed the torn-away bar aside, ignoring the wild thumping from the other side of the door he'd just sealed. "Well, they'll get over it," he said, punctuating it with the sound of his heel smacking into the steel. "How does the board look?"

Sif ran her hands across the notification console, absorbing as much information as she could as fast as she could. "In line with what Loki told us-"

"That's a shock."

She bared her teeth at the console. "Not now."

"Yes, _now._ Am I the only one scared to death he's going to jump sides at the apex of this grand mess we're in?"

She whirled on him. "No, you're not, but _do you have a better plan?"_

The pointy blond mustache wriggled a little as his lips worked against each other. Instead of admitting the negative he wore in his eyes, he looked away. "So we do what he says."

"We do what Thor authorizes, and he's standing by Loki on – you know, Fandral, we're not hashing this out right now." She resettled the dented shield on her back, then lifted a hand to point down at a knot of startled looking hauler pilots staring up at the control room they were in. "Thor's given the order and I'm giving the order to you. Go down there and take assessments of who can do what. Assure each one, combat ready or otherwise, that they will be repaid in full for any services rendered to the realm. Then report to me with an idea of how many of our people the non-combatant ships can move. We'll have to triage from there."

Fandral clicked his heels together and put his fist atop his chest, somehow managing to make the florid, hammy gesture sincere. "You, I'll obey without hesitation. My lady." He bobbed his head as she spun back towards the console, looking for the right frequency hailers to connect with Nova. She fumbled at her hip for the comm device that would connect her to the weird yellow ship in high orbit, her thoughts whirling in the hope that this time, of all times, Loki's actions might actually reward those who'd given him a fraction of faith.

. . .

Farbauti put the small device away, having learned the last of what she needed before committing to her plan. She glanced to her side, marking well each guard that flanked her, each shaman, each personal handmaiden who could wield a weapon or spell. In her wake trailed the rest, and she knew how each bent the knee and what each warrior stood to lose by her hand if they strayed. There could be no mistakes here, and so she selected for loyalty above all else. Nonetheless, one of her councilors kept dogging at her heels and hissing for attention as they marched towards a sheltered emptiness in the lee of the citadel. One of the old warrior-kith. She could hear his constant exhortations down to her smaller form, pleading for the ear of his queen, like a low grade buzzing against the wind. About as irritating, as well.

She put her hand up, then clenched it when she chose their position, turning with painful slowness to look up into the face of the furious warrior. Her eyes narrowed into his face, bidding him to say what he would and silently reminding him that he faced his Queen. The first and last command.

"They would _never_ do this for us!" The words spat against her in the oldest of the still-used jotun dialects, the choice deliberate and accusatory. It cut close to treason. Her guards fixed on the councilor, ready.

Farbauti studied the warrior with trained and clinical distance, seeing all the lessons of Laufey marked as plain as the swirls of his parentage across his scarred brow. She answered in kind, the guttural language rolling low in her throat as she gave the only answer she felt he was owed. "And that is why I will, Thiazi." She put her hand atop his chest and pushed, the intent behind it plain. He staggered away, feeling the ice in each razor nail and the threat that ice carried. "You are dismissed. Stand away."

He glowered as she gave him her back, not draped with rich furs or silks, but in the plainer shortcloak she favored for rangings. But, she noted carefully, he left. Let them old war-brothers of the last age rage against her method. It earned them nothing and would, in time, secure her position further. She lifted her chin to the sky, her voice pouring out in a royal roar. "Heimdall! Set aside grievance and open your gate! Jotunheim recognizes a threat meant for more than your realm alone, and so we offer assistance freely! Look close and mark well my just intent."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw blue knuckles turn almost stone-white with tension where they gripped frostbitten ice spears, and then, to no small and private surprise, there was only the dazzling flash of the Bifrost.

 _That_ choice told her more about the situation to come than all the notices from the Corp.

. . .

Thor stopped in his march towards the palace. He smelled of freshly broken Chitauri chitin and ichor and was followed by a handful of dazed but re-organized guards he'd pulled from the streets. Still confused, he tapped at the comm device set near his throat as if it would magically repeat what it'd just told him. The puzzlement was plain on his face, not quite certain he'd heard what it relayed correctly. "Loki?" he said to his brother's back, realizing that the slender form had frozen in his tracks almost as abruptly. "That _cannot_ be true."

"Farbauti has an agenda all her own, and I've certainly no guess to its endgame." Loki turned to take a few strides to the side of the last small bridge, leaning to peer towards the great gates of Asgard and its dazzling lane of light. "But there they are and here's all my shock incarnate. Armed for battle and-"

Something flashed in the sky and a handful of Chitauri chariots dropped abruptly out of it, too heavy to maintain flight under the weight of ice forged out of the vapor of the evening air. "Damn me thrice. They've engaged our grotesque little foes." Loki put his hands up in the air, visibly giving up. "I don't understand anything anymore." He looked at Thor, wry, his thoughts only for himself. _Mayhap this penchant for odd and nigh unknowable plans runs in the family. 'Twould be a last laugh, all my problems are genetic after all._ He looked back at more of the sudden clusters of black ice forming throughout the sky. "Well, that'll cut down a few of our troubles. In a rather literal fashion, I note."

Volstagg watched the new fight's front press forward in earnest, reaching the end of the bridge to take positions within Asgard proper. Even from this distance he could see that people fled around them on the streets, clearly unsure which faction they were afraid of more. But each massive blue figure took no notice of the civilians nor guards. They fixed only on Asgard's attackers, tall spears and icy shields at the ready. He still couldn't keep from fidgeting nervously, his weight shifting like a child before a disapproving father. "And at battle's end and we stand weakened if alive, what then?"

"If alive, may all the gods toss us salvation's rope? We thank them politely for their blades and their assistance and we hope for the damned best," said Loki. He looked back towards the palace, its sealed gate now well within sight. He knew by Hogun's silent manner they weren't going directly for the front. "Interesting development aside, let's hope your contacts have their end under control."


	21. Done and Undone

21\. Done and Undone

. . .

Lorelei spun, hearing the distant clatter as some of her guards returned, prepared to give new information as an offering. Their expressions told her all she needed to know, but the gestures of the one in the lead quickly told her the important detail. "Amora, they've almost breached the palace." She turned to stare at her sister's green-clad back. " _Both_ princes have been identified on approach, as you predicted and hoped. They'll come here soon, they won't idle around while they know what the real prize is. The presence of the Chitauri alone would have told them our desire."

"But they won't come together, they're never allied enough for that. They'll split once they're in. All the better for us, when we stand together as one." Amora clenched her hand, dismissing the trace of the runes in the air with obvious dissatisfaction. She turned, regarding Lorelei and her pets. She gestured at the six golden guards that still remained technically on watch over the vault's entry hall with a shake of her head. "That won't be enough to delay them. I've a determined use for them, anyway. But while I prepare for that, pick one and send him below as a message. The tunnelers themselves won't move, of course, they think they've got something to keep. I've a squadron set aside to enter the palace proper. That ought to let the boys stay busy." Her eyes dimmed as she considered. "Make sure they go up, too, towards the All-Father's spire. If they succeed in killing that old man while they're at it, excellent."

"As a message?" Lorelei spread her hands, her confusion encompassing more than her sister's direct order. She knew what the tunnelers were, Chitauri laborers burrowing deep through the old stone for whatever resources they could use or steal. That alone would be enough to collapse swaths of land when they were done. She didn't understand her sister's dismissal of them, too.

"Choose a homely one, Lorelei. You won't get him back. They're at hungry work below, let them slave away until I'm done with it all. Then, once you've done that... I need your hand."

. . .

Eir herself barked orders to the guards still under her command. The two that held the side door were dug in well behind a toppled set of tables dragged out from the nearby post and one of her four already bore a gaping wound he tried to fight through. If they could just manage to smash at least one of them upside the skull, that would be something.

She looked down as another of her girls tugged fast at her sleeve, the healer's long green dress already hiked up and held to help her run. "They won't notice me, they're too bloodhungry," rasped the girl in a whisper, her eyes too large in her tan face. "I'll get the gate, mum. Slip right past."

Eir gripped the girl around her shoulders in a hug, keeping her eyes on the struggle. "Bless you, and may the All-Father bless you when the day's done." She held tight, using her touch as a cue, shouting towards the guard who'd stepped up to lead the press. He'd balked in the healing halls, but when she and her girls forced him to look close at his addled fellow soldier when they bodily dragged one in from the hall, he'd followed her without any further complaint. Stodgy and slow, but he had eyes worth note. "Bjarke! Charge the table! Damn their defense, break it through!"

He gave a roar of answer and lifted his spear. Eir looked down to the girl, hoping she hadn't just condemned the young man in his first beard to a quick death. When wood began to splinter, she squeezed the girl's arm. "Go!"

She fled, eventually dodging behind one of the charmed pair to throw herself at the gate controls. It took using almost all her weight as a counterbalance but she managed to jerk the primary lever and slap at the panel at the same time.

One of the still-controlled guards whirled on her as the scraping sounds and the old iron smell of the inner gate filled the corridor. She stared back, uttering a wild, frightened, furious screech worthy of any warrior ready for a last clash. Eir put out a hand, already seeing the worst of what could come of her decision.

She needn't have worried. The door flung open and the first thing to come through was a flying hammer sparking hot white with electrical light. The guard took it full in the chin and collapsed instantly.

Eir's assistant breathed a fast gasp and fled back to her side. No waiting fool, she. Eir hugged her. "Well done," she said, looking back up in time to see the rest boil through the door to overwhelm the last controlled guard. Her small squad lifted their voices in a welcoming roar at the sight of their prince and she let go to step forward with a tilt of her head. "Your Highness." The other prince slipped in behind the rest, glancing over the scene. "Highnesses," she said, smoothly correcting herself without a blink. She reached out a hand to Hogun, beckoning him over. "I've the last update I can give. The vault floor is at risk. I don't know how long till they find a method of breach. Soon, I say."

"The guards?" The question came from Loki where he knelt to study both unconscious gatekeepers, his expression clinical and focused.

"Charmed, by some magical method." She studied the unsurprised look that crossed his face, noting the way Thor glanced at him. "Yes, I've identified possible vectors. Apparently as have you, my lords. We've appropriate healing prepared, but those methods require proximity and control. Aftercare, not an in-fight solution."

"Hurrah for the ever reliable concussion," Loki muttered, sounding dour.

"Not preferable... but needs must, I suppose. We'll be prepared for injured." She inclined her head politely, stepping back once as he nodded in understanding. Her assistants followed her lead, knowing by her posture that they would be returning to the healerie to gather what they could for field work. Each bobbed their head, lining up neatly behind her.

Thor looked down the hall, towards the inner keep. "Our king?"

"Still above, I believe. I've not seen him since his last dining, and that after eve's court last." Eir flicked her hand to gesture at a distant set of broad, elegant stairs.

Thor turned to regard Loki. "We're staying on plan, then."

"For now, it's all we can do." Loki looked up to regard Eir. "If the vault is breached – and you'll know, surely, as will we all – evacuate. Lady Sif has some options being prepared."

"No," said Eir. She smiled, folding her hands together in front of her in a posture of easy serenity. "We will not give in. We will remain until there is no longer life in Asgard, and when that last gasp of breath enters the void, so, too, will we."

Loki glanced at Thor, then towards the small cadre of healers as a couple of them began to drift towards the other staircases to the deeper sanctums. None of them looked fearful, either. "Then spare some of that life adrift on this land a little wish for luck."

His answer was a continuation and deepening of that small, calm smile.

. . .

Odin heard the new threat before he saw it, the low, guttural chittering noise that filled the darkened hall that led directly below and then towards the reinforced floor and the reinforced doors that forged the space set aside for his great vault. One of a king's many shortcuts through a sprawling palace, a simple set of long corridors and private stairs once bordered by capable guards that would salute as he strode by. Now there was only himself and his last pair of Einherjar, men so bound to long service that the years were nigh visible and grey upon both the faces under heavy golden helms.

He remembered how to step silently in his great armor, and how to hold the line against all odds. Thousands of years, countless battles. He was old, but was it not but mere years hence when he could still bark a frost giant lord into submission? His horse still bore his weight and his aching hands still held his great spear, Gungnir, high and ready. He could be, and was, still a king. And in Asgard, kings fought. To the end, if they must face that black hour when hope is thin and fragile.

These too were things he had let himself forget, in his weakness and grief. The sight of his sons – _both_ his sons – in Munin's gleaming and strange mind's eye, collaborating not against him but against the evil come form within, had been a stark and painful reminder of what he'd lost – and what he had, in charmed foolishness and own arrogance both, thrown away. What Munin saw was forever a kind of truth, and this time he looked carefully, forced himself to regard each glimpse of the scout's new memories to scour the boundaries of what he truly saw at work in his realm. Now Munin was away again at his own brother's side, aloft to monitor Asgard's new war for his master's eye.

Broad fingers tightened around the golden spear, his lone eye narrowing as the shadows ahead began to shimmer and then form into new shapes. Awful, angular shapes, those agamid features and insect-like calls. At his side, his guards tensed into well-trained readiness. He forgot his aches and remembered the scent of bloody plains.

When the handful of shrieking grey horrors began to skitter towards him, weapons preparing their boiling purple fire, he remembered how to roar.

. . .

Amora's grip tightened on her hand and Lorelei dropped to her knees with a cry, feeling the energy rip out of her and into the array of quick but destructive ley-work ahead of her. Amora's face was white fire, ignoring everything except the destructive channel of power she roughly shaped around herself and then flung forward.

The vault's door was two feet thick, made of dwarven steels and reinforced with rare minerals as pretty as gold but vastly more durable. The hinges were solid cores of iron and mystic weave tied to the internal gear-locks, those ancient alf-works that tasted the bloodline of kings and would only answer the call of those bound and permitted by that line. Atop it all was the secondary layer of invisible, tamed magic – elementals bound to watch and sound alarms into the shell of that king's ear, the air itself locking itself tight in all the nooks and crannies of the door. A common burglar cagey enough to manage the door's more mundane tricks would find his throat gasping for life and his mind deprived of oxygen. It was made for all of this and more, much of it strengthened after Loki, with the full permissions of title and name, had let jotun in through other now-sealed ways.

It toppled against the weight of the enchantress who stood before it, four guards fallen dead where they stood, their life drained from them and turned into trapped power to feed her. The fifth was pressed against the wall, a soldier's trained face lined with raw horror. Her charm was at a breaking point, stressed against the man's pure fear. Lorelei felt how it was all done, the channel still open and tearing through to her very soul. "Amora!" she screamed, afraid it wouldn't be heard as the golden metal smashed apart in weird, contorted fragments. In her soul-self, where the sorcerer's focus was forever seeking balance, she felt the edge of the black all around her. "I can give no more! You'll end me, too!"

Amora let go, ignoring the way her sister finished her collapse to the cold stone floor, her eyes narrowed and fixed on the entry as she sought her prize. Now there was only the calm. She glanced back as the last guard gave in and fled. "You were right, sweet sister. You're always right. We needed to work together."

Still gasping, Lorelei lifted her head bare inches to look at the corpses strewn behind her. _Her_ pets, tossed aside for Amora's need. She tried to rise, clasping her hand and its invisible inferno to her chest. "What was this atrocity? Where did you learn a discipline like that? Our teachers knew nor taught any such thing, not even the exiles!" She realized her voice came out like a keening wail only after she was done.

Nothing of this was what she'd expected. Especially not this, the insensate selfishness of how Amora took from the very core of herself. More than Lorelei would have ever given freely, even to her sibling.

"There are new things to learn out there in the dark, Amora, and gifts I was given for my service. I'll take them things freely given, and serve Thanos in the way he likes, so I may have what I deserve. And look, for the sake of your worry!" The tinkling, bell-like laugh returned, youthful delight. "But for the final little riddle, I have my prize. And me prepared to receive it!" Amora looked down to her, eyes bright. "Oh, do rise, little sister. We've still so much work to finish!"

"Let's just take the damnable thing and go," said Lorelei, too weary to put much fang in her words. Her defiance painted a fleeting moue on her sister's face. "This is our goal realized and vengeance wreaked, what more is there to desire?"

Another dazzling laugh. Amora stepped away from her, moving across the ruined threshold of the door into the vault proper. The side of her face was lit with the treasures ensconced along the walls, but her eyes were only on the thing that lay on a cushioned pedestal at the far end, its power contained within a clear lattice-work field conjured by the vault's protections. Once a Casket rested in that place of honor, the stolen relic of the jotun. Now another blue box waited in its place, this one with all the stars of the universe mirrored deep within. "Well, if Asgard was never to let us take and shape it, then let it be a sacrifice to show the rest of my intent."

The crawling chill returned to Lorelei's belly. "Amora."

"Ragnarok's legend is plain." A toss of her hair as she continued to step forward. "The world must drown in earth and in water. I can think of a fine way to arrange that. And you, my dear. I _need_ you. My beloved sister. The guards are gone. Do what you can to delay whichever prince dares to step this way first." She looked over her shoulder at where Lorelei yet lay, that small, pretty smile still on her face. "Do it, and we'll stand together at the end of this universe. Sisters to the last, and queens in the next one Thanos forges from the bones of the old."

What else could she do? Lorelei struggled to her feet, pulling what scraps of energy she could back into herself. She had to, for Amora watched every step she took.


	22. We All Fall Down

22\. We All Fall Down

. . .

Gungnir's grip was slick with alien ichor, but not slick enough to drop from his hands. Instead of the near-eternal weariness of the last several years, the All-Father feasted on that narcotic kind of adrenaline found only in battle. He and his guards stood amidst the fallen invaders, his snarl visible through his beard at the next band of attackers now gathering at the base of the staircase. A classic bottleneck – the first to break the stalemate would be trapped in the stairwell between to be slaughtered.

He would not be caught out so easily, not again and not so soon. There was power that could be called through the spear and he considered doing so. The spear was honed with those known battle-magics that lay in the hands of Asgard's kings, the few sorceries that even the stodgiest of warriors would never call unmanly. Let the creatures step closer, first, and be more efficient destroying them that way. Or perhaps another route, if one presented itself quickly. He considered, his teeth grit and then clenching outright when he felt the rumble course through the heart of his keep. He knew instantly what that meant.

The vault had been breached, and crudely. He growled outright, ready to reconsider his notion of not plunging through the stairwell.

Instead of that, the Chitauri below looked away from him at something else, their voices raised in that hellish set of screams. The next cry drowned them out. "Father!"

"Thor," said Odin, meant for himself. The word alone nearly made him sag, the adrenaline immediately draining. His boy. His lost boy. Now he called down the stairwell. "The vault."

"I know." The sound of metal spinning and screeching on an approach. "Loki's closer, sent word of what he thinks happened. He chases to their edges by his last message."

"Won't be enough, not if it's been opened. They'll be prepared, our invaders. They were prepared for me." Now the spear wobbled in his hand. He remembered his age, mirrored in the broad, bright face of his son as the Chitauri were slammed aside in seconds. The grey plague gone and dashed into pieces against the stone, now he saw the red cloak at his son's shoulders in their place. "Loki's tricks won't be enough. The vault has a few defenses left to slow an intruder. We may not be in time for them to be any good." He was unable to keep the despair from leaking into his voice. Then he swallowed it down as the fragments of his pride that reminded him if that must be so, then it was still not yet over. There were always plans left to fight for.

"Then we go back down, quickly, and do what we must while we can. The route is clear, Father. I've made damn well sure of that. Guards are returning as well, as best they may considering how much is still needed beyond the walls."

Now Odin did sag against his spear, seeing in the words all his failures anew. All which he had yet thrown away. "They should never have been sent out. Damn me, and damn my doubts." He stretched a broad hand to the young man, trying to consider what to do against the worst. "Come, then. A king must always stand to war."

. . .

The translucent orb glowed softly green between Loki's hands, then snapped away once more into nothingness. In the halls of the palace, where his own trails still lay from centuries of knowing every inch of the walls and the floor, there were few things that could hide from him when inside. The orb was one of his old tricks, a minor bit of scrying that let him know if footsteps drew close to certain areas. Once it was used for harmlessness, to keep watch for a guard who had orders to not let the young prince wander overmuch through the library at night. Now it told him of something potentially much more risky. "We've an ambush laid not far ahead. Small one, masked presence. Wager it's one of the sisters, and of that likely the younger." He shook his thoughts away and focused on the tight face of Volstagg by his side. The man said little while they followed Loki's trail. "Watch your companions. If it's Lorelei, she'll sing a few pretty words to ensnare what she can."

Volstagg fidgeted. Loki narrowed his eyes at the motion, vastly more concerned with the deep rumble that had left a few thin cracks along the golden walls. "Aye," came the rumble, eventually.

Loki stared at the giant brute of a man, openly exasperated. "All right, what? Is it the usual mistrusts? Please, unburden yourself quickly so we can get on with the business of preventing a disaster. Or can it at least wait until we find out how bad the situation is beyond this hall?"

"Ye trust me at your back?"

Pale hands spread in a surrender. "Volstagg, cut me a single thread of mercy. I've got a sorceress ahead, a blown vault above, and not a lot of options standing behind. Trust isn't a consideration. Watch over your charges and if someone starts to yodel into your ear a pleasing tune about how great it would be if everyone would just turn into the best roast meat you've ever had, _hit them with your axe_." He turned away, eyeing the dark hall ahead with all the caution he could bring to bear. He heard Volstagg fidget once more and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Instead he brought dim light to flicker along his hands, a ready weapon of his own. If it must be a mage's battle, that he could handle. Without risk from those old charms, no less. He'd prepared for that.

 _Never do the same trick for the audience twice._ He grimaced. Old and good advice that he'd shared more than a few times himself. If Lorelei was smart, she'd press the growing cracks instead of trying to sway her attackers.

Smart enough. He sensed the ripple before he saw it, a _push_ of power meant to blow the walls that was far less mighty than he feared. Knowing the stones of the palace better, he was able to snap out a countermeasure with a whispered word. Still, some of the ad hoc warriors at his back flung themselves to safety away from a set of now-wiggling statues. He braced himself for the follow-up attack.

None came. Was this some newer trick, then?

"Get your men out of here," said Lorelei, from somewhere in the hall ahead. Her voice was low and still richly pretty even as it sounded far heavier than he recalled, but Loki sensed no trick or charm buried in it. That didn't stop Volstagg from slapping his hands to his ears behind him, the axe nestled in his elbow. Ridiculous, but understandable. "Run, and I won't kill you."

He snapped a magelight into being and bade it float towards the voice, wondering if she was playing at illusions instead. Come around the back to try to herd them into a killing lane. No, there she was, half-sagged against the narrow corridor entrance with her expression again full of that anger and old hate. Familiar things, all. The sight of her drawn, exhausted face cast sharply into the light told him a number of startling things quickly. She uttered a mage's unintelligible word and put herself back into the darkness. Her only advantage. "You're capable of better bluffs, Lorelei."

"No bluff, king's son. Whichever king. I hear tell, you're lost to both kingdoms that can claim your name. I'll end myself and take you with me if I have to. We win this day, when you and others _stole_ our last victory."

"Amora wins, you mean." Loki looked over his shoulder and beckoned Volstagg and his men further down the hall and out of range of the worst. She _could_ do what she suggested, if she were willing to expend what was left of herself against the walls once more. By the look of her, that was all she had. It would be enough to delay them and protect her sister. Sweet Amora, who could make nearly anyone think she loved them. Old ruefulness turned bitter in his mouth before becoming something akin to sympathy. Anyone. "She left you in her wake once before, she'll leave you aside again. How long did you sit alone in that cell before she chanced a visit? Was it years? Centuries? And how did that first conversation go, I wonder? I remember you both well enough to have certain questions here. On Midgard they named a flower for another life like hers, a pretty little Narcissus. Shame they didn't pick something a touch more parasitic."

She hissed at him from the other side of the dark hall. The cracks scraped against each other, pressure building again.

Loki put his hands down instead of readying a new defense. He took another step into the hallway, open to an easy attack from almost any angle. He could hear her move further away, slow, like her legs were heavy. He chanced it anyway, speaking to her in a low, conversational voice. "Even if you live and leave here, Lorelei, it won't be what you think. It won't be whatever Amora's told you. Serving Thanos. He won't share what he has, not with anyone. It's an illusion, a lie, the kind you and I and Amora herself have fed others. If you live, he'll use you. He's using her, though I expect she believes she embraces it willingly. As he used me."

"He used you because you're a fool who thinks he's more than that, when he's just a tool for better men." She spat the words at him. Her power was thinned, but bile was cheap.

He found her attack didn't hurt. Nothing more than things he'd bitterly considered a few times himself in hours alone. "And here we stand. Me, that escaped tool, and you exhausted to the fringes of Death's domain in a breaking corridor, spouting words for your sister who is no doubt hale and healthy and about to put a stone of raw infinity in those pretty hands of hers." His voice became sardonic. "We know our own."

Another rumble came instead of some response from the exhausted woman, prompting him to bring his hand up to try and counteract whatever she could do in her last extremity. By her startled gasp he immediately realized this wasn't by her act. The walls cracked further, exposing the crumbling, sparkling minerals that lay underneath countless microthin layers of gold. Minerals that were meant to be the strongest fundament to build the heart of a kingdom. Even this stoic base had limits. "Get your men out of here! All of them, if you care to survive."

"If she means to threaten us still, my lo-"

"Shut up, Volstagg." Loki didn't look back at the warrior, feeling another rumble through the soles of his boots. He glanced at the walls, feeling his stomach drop into the depths of Hel. "If _you_ want to live, Lorelei, quit this and run back to your sister's side. Watch her face carefully when you return, however, if she spares a glance for you and not her prize. Watch close and think for yourself. And remember that I warned you."

The burly warrior grabbed at his arm, looking at him like he was mad. The expression on his face was a plainspoken question – why let the traitor woman escape?  
Loki stared steadily back as the small sound of footsteps drifted into the distance, drowned out by the growing rumbles. Following her would be a poor plan. They needed to withdraw. He braced himself for the next quake just before it ripped through the floor, his mind already hard at work piecing together what the worst case scenario was going to look like. The comm device near his throat had gone dead, no longer even static from Rocket's line. He realized with chilly, unwelcome clarity what that meant. "Because we're too late."

. . .

Farbauti wrapped her hand around the thin rail of the bridge as the world entire shook, examining the sparking blue glimmer that began to fill the atmosphere with a coldly trained, clinical distance that replaced all fear. Her personal guards snarled at the distant line of Chitauri, most of whom had lost all interest in their enormous attackers. They screamed to each other instead as they looked back towards the palace as one, and she did not know or care about what so offended them. Dotting the area nearby were the smaller figures of those guards who had long since stopped worrying about the strangeness of their unannounced backup, and now they too looked up to see the sky change.

She didn't join them. She looked down from that high bridge instead, at the far horizon where the tamed waters met the edge of space. As the seconds ticked on, fear began to intrude into the shell of her training. The blue veil of the world was all but peeling against the pressure of black, uncaring void, the curated atmosphere under strain. The stars were coming out, bright against the purpling and unnatural sky, but that was not the only thing that filled the expanse of what she saw.

The mysteries of those mythic gems were not things she knew deeply, but still she recognized what was happening. An unanchored, slowly tumbling Asgard torn from its rightful place amidst the stars through the sheer power of some infinite mastery. The impossible made real. Coming visible against the light-strewn horizon was the still-distant outline of an entire other world, one she knew only vaguely from sketches of the other realms strewn across the limbs of Yggdrasil. Midgard, with its vast seas and all its corners speckled with young and unaware life.

Earth, and its drowning water. The fall of Asgard would take both worlds if the holder of the gem so willed it, completing its legend with brutal plainness.

She knew full well what extinction looked like. Her people wore the scars of that knowledge, and lived in defiance of that crawling fate. Farbauti tore her gaze away from the approaching apocalypse, all her choices already well-committed before she'd called to Heimdall. Even this possible outcome. At her movement, grey-blue faces turned to heed her order. "Evacuate what you can to our realm and know they will fear and fight you! Go street by street and herd the people towards the guarded gate! Fling them towards the bridge if you must! Quickly, we've no idea how long that will still work!"

She was granted some measure of confidence that not a single one of her giants hesitated before plunging deeper into the fringes of the slowly cracking city.


	23. Kill the Wabbit

23\. Kill the Wabbit

. . .

Phil Coulson fumbled his new hand into the pocket of his suit, not looking away from the wall monitors in his office that streamed live data from a hundred different startled observatories across the globe. As the crystal thrummed its insistent message up his arm, the grey-faced man from JPL and the other guy from NASA kept pointing nervously at hastily scrawled trajectory mathematics. Phil didn't know the physics behind all the notations, but he got the gist. Something big and weird had just entered the Earth's general orbit, not far beyond where the moon kept to its steady course.

He'd already had a bad feeling he knew what was going on up there. Now he _knew_ he was right. The crystal felt like ice as he swapped it to his good hand, and he sat down slowly as Loki's tense, hurried voice came through as if from everywhere. Behind the words he could hear the slow screaming of metal and all he could picture was those vast walls of ornate, ancient, glorious gold rending themselves into tortured junk. He felt sick.

 _"_ _Brief: We've lost our chance at the stone and it's gone active in enemy hands. Too far behind, didn't move fast enough. It doesn't matter, I suppose. I don't have access to data and we've lost all ability to connect with the Corp, much less Rocket, but I'm guessing you've got about six hours at the most before debris starts hitting. We've too much momentum and very little time to do anything about that. I've just now met up with Thor and the All-Father, we're not done yet. According to the king there's still a chance we can avoid a full collision and thus your end entire, but you're fated for some impact no matter what we can do. If you're lucky, much of it will burn on entry. But not all._

 _"_ _I suggest you make an alternate plan. If this is the last you hear of me, whether this means our end or yours... I'm sorry."_

Phil stared at the crystal long after the message itself ended. Then he jerked himself back out of the seat to pull together an emergency idea team.

. . .

"They're annoyingly clever, they'll come up with something." Loki tossed aside a small chunk of rubble as the All-Father continued to work the ancient holographic schematics of Asgard. "They've survived worse at this point, and for once I'm not actually referring to myself."

"The dinosaurs didn't," muttered Odin, his voice filtering sour through his beard. His attention remained on the data before him.

"Well, the dinosaurs didn't invent cellphones, either, so I suppose that's another point in favor of the current residents." Loki looked at Thor with his dirty hands spread in nigh-frantic exasperation. Thor looked back, shaking his head. "Can we not dither and bicker as if we are about to sup? What's this plan? Amora's still above, controlling the stone until she's satisfied that we're going to be well and truly destroyed. I advise against charging her blindly, she'll like as not drop any of us into some random, unknown place in the depths of the galaxy." He ducked instinctively as something slammed into the towers above, creating a lightshow of fire and falling debris. Ashes drifted to the balcony just beyond where they held their impromptu planning. "And that is the third air chariot I've seen do that."

Thor jutted his chin towards the open sky as another rippling piece of torn metal drifted down. Mjolnir rested easily in his hand, despite the tension that put years on his face. "Why, you think? They've all but stopped firing on the city itself. Favorable while our people try to survive, but not exactly good news in its stead."

"I don't know, I wasn't involved in the pre-let's-ruin-Asgard committee this time!" His tense snarl drew the slow, ponderous gaze of Odin. "It's possible Amora's acting of her own will here and thus upsetting her given troops, but I can't know for certain and it doesn't particularly matter. The realm falls. I am at a loss and without a plan. I didn't dare consider the fullness of our possible failure overlong. I do have limits to my cynicism, after all."

The schematics changed as the king passed a hand along them. "While the stone is aloft, much is moot. The space around our world is changing moment by moment. But if we can interrupt what is being done to us, then the fall, I believe, can be halted and undone." He focused in on what appeared to be a control network, deep within the ground where the Bifrost connected not to Heimdall's position, but where the bridge met the greater landmass. "This is of course the key to that, its door only I can unlock. Your little friend could never understand our bridge, not only because it is beyond their young ken but because it was _always_ the stone's gift to us. Built and rebuilt, with that keystone of its make sealed well away between because our forefathers knew what it could do in fouler hands. This was the prize and the trust we had been given, by them Elders at the dawn of our civilization." Odin looked at Loki again as the sound of heavy running feet approached. "I know you knew some whisper of this. How else did Thanos know where to send you, and what lay on the other side of that opened door?"

Loki looked away in a silent admittance, his face haggard in the dimming light of the sky and the flickers of the city's flame. Then he turned full as Volstagg entered the room, gasping as his run came to a stop. "What word from Sif?"

"They got all the ships in the air before that Amora untethered us, but that moved only about eight hundred who were close to the port." Volstagg bent over, catching his breath before continuing. "Real news is from Hogun at the gates. Heimdall's dug in and the bridge yet bends to his will. The stars are wrong and out of place by his charting, but he marks the realms yet well enough. It strains him, but he holds. And he has sent many hundreds, perhaps by now thousands through to shelter arranged. Still too few, but it's something." A hacking cough. "Sheltered by them jotun, for all wonders marked. They're still under a storm, snarls one of them to me like I asked him if he chewed on moonblight for his breakfast, but they chivvy our people inside their own gates carefully enough despite. Universe gone mad, I reckon."

"They owe us nothing but their mislike and hate, yet today they stepped forward unannounced," said Odin, his voice heavy. He didn't look at Loki, regarding Volstagg instead with careful deliberation. "No doubt we will owe them a great debt, should we survive this day. But if no few of our people live... we'll fret at consequences when it's due." He waved it away. "Thor, I put you to the task of the stone above. Stop its current by whatever means necessary. Re-acquire if you can, but what madness is yet being wrought _must_ be ceased for this plan to work."

"Sire." The single word was blunt and full of determination.

"Loki, with me." The king looked up to regard the sudden stillness in the pale young man. "The machinery is old and well-magicked, gifts of engineering and scholarly care and in them things you might recognize and control more quickly than my hand will. And we need quickness above all else, if we're to give any hope to either world."

Loki studied the All-Father as the great old warrior shoved away from the table without waiting for a response, and what he thought of that command he did not for a second let show on his face. He glanced at Thor after that long moment, the unnatural stillness leaving his form as he chose to move towards the cracking doorway in Odin's wake. "Go do what you must, then. Be a hero."

"And you, Loki? What will you be?" Thor's voice was pitched for him alone.

"Suppose we'll see." He jerked when Volstagg touched his arm as Thor left by another passage, one that led to a less-used passage above. "What?"

The burly warrior looked after Odin, then back to the prince, that strange awkwardness on his face anew. "One fast word, before departure."

" _Fast."_ He all but hissed the word, impatient and past done with the warrior's fidgeting. If it had to do with that ridiculous dinner, he had no time and no longer a care.

"That Coulson told ye nothing after all, did he?" Volstagg muttered into his beard, stodgily uncomfortable. He took his hand away from Loki's arm, shaking his head. "Should not have doubted that he'd keep to his word. Good, honorable man."

"And what _precisely_ would he have told me?" His perplexity was audible.

"That I did try to interfere with your trial last, and tried to waylay another's method of justice. It didn't work. I was shown my error by my betters, by Sif and that Son of Coul both. I'm sorry." Gruff but honest, the big eyes flickering once to Loki's stunned face. "I'm very sorry. I don't trust thee, prince, still can't feel I should. But that was not the right way to feed my fears and if this be our last day I ought pay my due." He stepped back and didn't look at Loki this time, glancing carefully at the cracks in the walls where they marred the ancient moulding. "I'll go help Thor. To the end, like."

Loki grabbed at his arm instead, digging in his fingers until Volstagg locked back in on his face. "Remind Thor of what you saw, what I tried to tell them both on arrival. Think. If Lorelei's yet there at Amora's side, if you're all fortunate, you might buy some opportunity through her. She's not an idiot. Neither of them ever were, but watch her face with as much care as I advised her in scouring another's." He let go with a brief nod, not sure what else he felt. "Good luck, and may that fortune favor."

"And ye, Loki. Luck for us all."

. . .

Fitz shook his head rapidly, glancing up at the engineers and mathematicians Coulson corralled from all over the facility. Others were networked in from elsewhere, along with a few allies from inside civilian walls. It was up to him to break it all down to the team. "It's not another Sokovia situation. It's similar, yes, I hear what you're saying-"

"Could someone have told whoever the bad guys are this time that it's been done?"

He continued over Mack's interruption, dogged. "It's not the same thing at all, ultimately. Sokovia was a small localized event with an impact radius that could have imitated primordial die-back scenarios. The dino-comet, right? At about two kilometer square, it didn't really have the altitude or the speed of approach necessary for the worst outcome Ultron wanted when they stopped him, thank goodness. We'd possibly all have been dead within years, though, fighting off robots and new, brutal winters as the remaining squids in the oceans prepare to take their next turn on the evolutionary wheel or whatever. _This_." He tapped at the table display that cycled through a visual simulation, its white light flickering along the side of his face. "Is the end. Asgard is a remarkably small planetoid-type space object that shoddy napkin math says is about equal to Rhode Island, if a titch smaller yet. About eight hundred to a thousand kilometers square, all right? My readings of some things in their library tells me their natural soil and mineral density give it a great deal more mass – weight - than our comparable measured size, right?"

"Okay." Coulson nodded to press him along, deep down not wanting to.

"Okay. Sokovia by this math is, all other factors equal, a fraction of the potential destructive yield as what we face this hour. The factors are _not_ equal, they are deeply worse. Asgard is currently about 300,000 kilometers out and dropping fast. Much faster than the city, by a large multiplier. At the rate they're going, they'll lose atmosphere and die out well before they get a final accelerated boost from our gravity pull. Regardless of whatever miracles they've built. And when they hit." Fitz dropped his stylus and spread his hands. "Mars is going to get another asteroid belt on its other side. We're _gone._ It's not a die-back, it's a totally shattered planet. Water boiling away into space, core exposure, disintegration. The whole deal."

The room was silent. Phil rubbed at his mouth, not really aware he was doing it.

"Please tell me there's good news." The shaky whisper came from Daisy. "Please."

Coulson took a slow, measured inhale while he looked around inside his mind for his best available pep talk. "The good news is we don't have to try to fix Asgard. We can't. Either they live or we all die, and as badly frightened as I am here alongside all of you, there's some factors yet in play to make that sound less bleak. If you're in this room, then you've spent the last year or so getting some _weird_ confidence in a guy that used to be pretty hot on screwing things up for us. He's up there right now with his brother, a classic card-carrying Avenger. Who's kind of a big deal especially if you like them beefy and good looking, right?"

He got the timid, almost nervous laughter he hoped he'd draw. That was enough to begin easing the tension on everyones' faces.

"They're going to do everything they can to avoid the worst, right until the last second. So, don't worry about the planetoid crashing relentlessly towards us in an audition for a Michael Bay flick." Another weak laugh at his drawl. "Not our wheelhouse. I've got the brief on the situation we _do_ need to handle. We're looking at several hundred tons of strewn debris leading the fall, already calculated to be outside their own gravity range. That stuff's gonna hit real soon and that's something that maybe we can do a few things about. First, we're getting the Helicarrier back in the air within the hour, along with a full field of weapons fire to incinerate what we can before impact. Second, Stark Industries is retasking some counter-munitions tech, along with their iteration of the Iron Dome. Third, here comes the really controversial play. Agent May?"

May lifted her chin from where she stood with her arms crossed against her black leather jacket. "I got an emergency connection to Latveria up through UN channels twenty minutes ago, cutting them in on what we knew and asking them for technological assistance."

" _What?_ " The blurt came from Mack. He lifted his hand. "That a good idea?"

"Probably not, but I want to be alive to eat pancakes tomorrow and maybe have a good, relaxing cry. Their official response initially was that they were aware of the situation and appreciated the contact." Her fingertips squeaked against the leather. "Just before we came in for briefing, I got a call back. They may have something, a low-atmosphere debris net that they apparently use to cancel and recover their own satellites without anyone else knowing. I don't know if I was getting an explanation or a strange humblebrag, but right now we're negotiating with all powers that have a territorial claim on the north to mid Atlantic to get them official access for a wider spread. We're seeing that as the likeliest target point for most of the fallout."

Phil nodded to her. "I realize literally everyone in the room is thinking of that as a possible bandaid on a messy cadaver, but I'm voting for blueberry flapjacks dusted with chocolate sprinkles, okay?"

"You're not invited to my private breakfast, Phil." She managed the thinnest smile.

"I will make my own and you can't stop me." More laughter. He took another inhale, thankful to hear it. "Okay, that's where we are. Each group is working on debris calc, triaged by damage potential. I don't want to rely on Latveria's tech, I want redundancies for everything."

He studied each person on his team, each set of eyes still tight but trying to focus on what lay ahead. "I'm going to borrow a line from my predecessor here, so listen close. _Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on._ " He nodded once, firmly. Then he felt some warmth return as a few faces regained their confidence. "It's not dead yet. Go help it."


	24. The Root of the Tree

24\. The Root of the Tree

. . .

Amora beheld the infinite layers, complexity, and emptiness of space through a pure blue filter that threatened to scorch out her natural sight. Her hands did not touch the Tesseract's geometric shell itself, much less the more amorphous core of the stone that rested within, but she felt the intensity of its power thrumming through her hands. If she did let it contact her skin without further preparation, she would be lost utterly within it. Burned out by the sheer vastness, and left a husk knelt before her treasure. Instead, she struggled to maintain this balance. The stone scraping just out of reach of her fingertips, and her mind focused on this infinitesimally tiny scrap of it. Hate and jealousy was her focus-stone, and her only reliable tether was all but collapsed on the floor next to where she knelt.

She could feel Lorelei's eyes on her. Only on her; the gaze heavy and weary, the girl incapable of ending either brother herself. At least she'd sent them off somehow before daring to return to Amora's side, and now they could do little in the face of the stone's power except wait for the end. She smiled into the blue light. It didn't matter what her sister saw when she looked upon her in victory. It was right. The younger must bow to the elder.

In this tiny facet of the eternally expanding universe, she watched how two planetary forces were doomed to collide, and knew her own discipline to be the cause of it. She had a dual point of view for the spectacle; on the one hand her own tiny place amidst one of those condemned realms and then as the other, above and observing in a way that would humble even Asgard's mighty gatekeeper. She smiled, a prickling spread of muscles that could fill galaxies if she would just reach out – but she had already pressed hard against the limits set to her by Thanos. It would not do to overreach further, not when he had granted her so much.

Only this much taken for herself, to mark her name in the emptiness left between the stars. Let all behold her, and let no one stop her. Not even the specks that drew close once more to where she knelt. She closed her eyes, but the universe remained mapped in her mind. "Lorelei," she said, her voice lilting sweetly. "One more time against our enemies. Together."

"Together," came the dull response.

. . .

Loki wrenched at the ancient door, its hinges broken and torn out of alignment due to the pressures of the wracked earth above. "I'm not sure the internal building's particularly up to code right now and there's, oh, I don't know, a rather concerning amount of pressure per inch on the place if I'm looking at the architecture correctly." He sounded strained. They were on a deep-set path cut into the exposed side of Asgard, framed on one side by sheer rock wall and on the other by roaring water that fell into nothingness and vapor, only to reform as part of the lake above. Without Odin's guidance and his guttural whisper to a protective cloak, no one would have found this place. And below, the black veil of space was growing clearer. Not much longer until he was going to be able to identify the individual landmasses on that approaching blue world. "Do I need to make a little squishing noise to underline my concern here?"

"It will hold." Odin sounded far more sedate.

 _Or perhaps the madness of being prepared for the end for these many months has pretty much inured him to this, our worst to come. There's an odd bright side, I suppose._ He grit his teeth and tugged again, feeling metal scrape against the hard packed dirt as he found at least some small victory. One more yank, and he was able to squeeze in far enough to press his back into the frame. Then he slammed a boot against the door and _shoved._

Metal screamed in offense, but it did as he demanded. Now it would let them both in without too much of a struggle. He looked inside the lobby of the pitch black repository and casually flung a magelight in to start illuminating their way. "Right. Let's find out then, shall we?"

The All-Father took lead past him without a word, picking his way quickly through the barely lit darkness towards another hall, and that down into a corridor that led, absurdly, into light. Loki followed, pausing when he saw the hidden orrery full for himself – a vast room lined by still-crystalline windows and a narrow balcony on one side from which some unknown engineer could observe the stars with their own eyes. Like the hidden path, the balcony was also carefully built to be invisible from most regard.

The great machine in the center of the room slow-spun its intricate whorls of golden and silver orbits to ferry along its gleaming gemstone planets, each one of these faceted on countless sides. Nine of these were held high, each one recognizable by its shape and coloring and connected to the machine not only by their orbits but by a tree-like cradle of ornamentation. A small and golden orb fixed above the rest shimmered sickly as it teetered at the edge of its frozen orbit.

The rest of the machine charted a vast swath of their known sector and the local galaxies in a more basic manner, orbits ticking along slowly in geometric shorthand. In each small stone, countless information could be observed. The base of the device where it melded into the floor matched Heimdall's pedestal, carved into an imitation of wood. Or perhaps it _was_ wood, fossilized and ancient. Along the walls, consoles ringed the room and he recognized their etched markings above their controls as careful, sacred geometry. All things in balance, and all things in them ancient patterns. Even humans knew some of these; the consoles carved into things that Kepler would have recognized when compiling his _Mysterium Cosmographicum_.

"We stand at the core of Yggdrasil, the heart of how we have come to understand our place in the sky. Now, Frigga knew this facility somewhat better than I. She found it curious, this old machinery meant to map and know the stars. Automated, as you see, and it adapts. It was not until Heimdall came of age and we understood his gifts that this place truly became a relic of that old era. We relied on him and let this place spin on, often untouched and forever capable of its own care. The Tesseract was brought here in those days after your capture, and so we realigned our place in the sky and remade the bridge with it. Heimdall's hands guided that work, him most naturally in tune with what the machine can see and do. But him we also need at the bridge and there's no time left to retrieve him here."

"The hidden heart of the Bifrost," Loki said, understanding the enormity of what he was looking at and realizing that somehow the machine already calculated that they were out of place. The golden orb representing Asgard shivered wildly every few seconds, the effect a jerky ghost in space.

"As above, so below, is that not the discipline you practice? The machine charts our realms as they are, but look now at our realm so flawed and its orbit cracked. We cannot rely on the stone returning, so we must not lose the bridge, that fragment of some infinite power. But we can yet use it – for this is the root, Loki. Map and anchor both."

He grasped what the All-Father was getting at. The cosmological physics were all there to be seen, graphing out a firm place in the universe for Asgard to rest. If Thor could stop what Amora was doing, the Bifrost's power could be turned inward. Instead of using it as a gate for its smaller residents, he might be able to force the machine-heart of Asgard to gate _itself_ and the planetoid entire back to where it belonged. It occurred to him that would also impact reality, and he filed away a curiosity. Perhaps the Aether – the stone of Reality itself incarnate – had made some mark here once as well.

He took a step back to take in the room more fully, trying to understand _how_ that was going to work based on the archaic machinery set – grown, really - into the facility. Frigga's interest was a clue, as was the intricate carve-work on each console. It was going to be something ordered; scholastic and philosophical both. Odin studied him as he did so. "Who built all this?"

"I do not know, Loki. I've often wondered – and wondered if it mattered. They are gone, and we stand where they have been."

"For now," Loki muttered, the dourness returning.

"For now. Can you riddle this out?"

Loki looked at the orrery and its consoles in turn, looking at their sacred geometry, looking at the patterns. Things began making sense as he mentally calculated probabilities, hashed quick translations, and used those things he knew and had been taught over centuries as a base. "I have to."

. . .

Thor gave Mjolnir a spin in his hand, focusing on its perfect balance while also considering the problem ahead. The shadows told him there were still two women. One was rising from the floor in some form of readiness as they approached. A charge was indeed going to be a poor play. "Well. Any final notions, Volstagg?"

He got a grunt for his first reply. "They know we're here. Saw us coming plain." Thor listened to him shift behind the pillar, the huge man's whispering voice becoming unusually thoughtful. "Amora'll toss the younger to us first, cannon fodder. If'n Loki's right, might be enough right there. Chance some luck in our favor after all."

"Well, there's the next strangest thing I've heard all day." Thor snorted, somewhere between confused and touched. That was most of his own idea as well. "You endorsing a plan from my brother's mouth?"

"Means it well enough and I was there for what he saw. I saw it, too. And we know a few stories 'round here, about siblings not doing so well at each other's side." Volstagg cleared his throat at the wry glance he got. "Wait and see what comes, I say, and look to not harm the younger one."

That, too, he'd considered. "She might yet harm _us_. If she does something unexpected, Volstagg, it doesn't mean she's on our side."

"What's to lose?" said Volstagg, mournfully tossing a glance out the window at the withering sky.

"Everything. Still and all, everything." He braced himself as a shadow suddenly approached.

The whisper came as if from everywhere. Volstagg clapped his hands to his ears but not quickly enough. This time, the sibilant, pretty voice crawled in and made a place inside his mind. He couldn't make out words, but the concept was clear enough: _Stay._

Thor gripped Mjolnir, waiting for the moment when Lorelei would turn his steadfast friend against him. The soft voice came in a way he didn't expect – Lorelei's voice yet indeed, but no power in it. No trickle of charm across his skin, no slither of seduction wrapped itself around his brain. The exhausted face of the young woman came into his view, fixing him plain with her eyes. "And you as well, pretty Thor."

He froze, studying the way she looked at him. She knew what she did – or rather what she had not yet done. _Loki, you mad, tactical bastard. What exactly did you say to her?_

"Any slower, sweet sister, and you'd have taken the hammer full for your trouble." Amora sounded distracted, but she didn't move from her place framed by the ruined balcony just out of sight.

"I am worn, Amora. I chose my priority. Volstagg is easier, and confusion as valuable. Thor... Thor can fight. He's broken free before. I had to be careful." Her voice put a smile in it to be heard, but there was none in her face. Her eyes narrowed. "Fortunately, I have practiced where I can."

"My lady," said Thor, going for low, painfully calm, and princely for his side of this unusual game. A fraction of tension went out of Lorelei's shoulders, but still her eyes fixed dangerously on him. One wrong play and she'd do whatever she was up to purely _her_ way.

It occurred to Thor there was no small chance she might not pull a final trick and take the stone for herself.

"Forget the lunk. Bring the prince closer. Let's see if your charms will bend as the prince watches his death draw close."

"They might, Amora, I'm tired and so cannot put my full force behind them." She clucked her tongue. "Oh, but do step forward a few steps, pretty prince. To my side and no further. Just enough to behold what is before thee."

He did, and watched Amora's back as she knelt before the Tesseract. Its power was on the verge of growing past the boundaries of its cosmic cube, though the ritualistic motions of her hands kept it in check for now. His hammer still rested in his hand. He could knock it free – but if he did, it could be unchained entirely. And beyond her loomed the growing sphere of that other world. Not much longer before their atmosphere would fail. An hour. Perhaps two. Not long enough for a lifetime.

No fool was Thor, but he had no easy answer to the riddle before him. Did Lorelei?

"And what say you to the view, pretty pet?"

Lorelei's hand snuck its way to his arm and squeezed meaningfully. "He is struck dumb, Amora. I am busy ensuring I hold control." Her voice was weary enough to ensure that sounded true. "Instead I set him to watching thee, triumphant in victory."

"Good enough, then." It came out smug. Amora didn't turn to regard her sister. Her eyes were meant for space alone. "And what say you of these last few moments?"

"I say yet we take our winnings and go. Asgard's fall is lovely to behold, but I am not over-eager. I was born here, as was thee." Lorelei's face flickered into Thor's view. "And besides. The longer we take at this final stage, the more likely someone – probably Loki – will find some method to thwart us." The hand on his arm tightened again, making sure he noticed how Amora tensed at the name. "Oh, but there's a useful thought. Why don't I simply ask? Good prince, does Loki hold some plan?"

Thor thought fast, then went for a version of the truth. Still maintaining that even-mannered tone, he said, "He does not, not truly. All hopes he might forge at my father's side hinge on my actions here. There might be salvation for Asgard, but only if I act – or you grant us mercy, my lady."

Amora laughed gaily as Lorelei's hand stayed on his arm. "At last I triumph over the wretch. Oh! Is _that_ true, then? That he is indeed some monster? One of those ugly blue freaks after all? An extra gift, that so many of them might die on these streets today as well."

The words hit him with a chill. Lorelei stayed in his view, unworried. The realization followed close after. Like that old scepter, Lorelei's tricks didn't necessarily change her victims. Just their loyalties and narrowed certain of their desires. Honesty was still his first and best defense. She squeezed again as he waited almost too long to speak. "He is my brother. I regard all else as unimportant in the final reckoning."

"The pause tells me the exact answer I wanted! Today is perfection, Lorelei. I stand at the threshold." Her hands glided around the edge of the cube's aura. "Should I give that mercy, you think? Spit in the prince's eye one more time?"

Lorelei's hand left his bicep and went to his wrist, where Mjolnir still rested. Her eyes flickered past his shoulder towards where Volstagg still stood, transfixed. "Sister, I fade. I must... I must rest soon. You took too much from me. Let us take the stone and depart, let them try to save the world in their desperation. Grant the mercy, because we can. That's a finer knife, isn't it?"

"You'll rest soon enough, my dear." Amora barely seemed to have heard the rest.

Skirts rustled as Lorelei began to slump, but her eyes were still sharp. Thor got it, hearing the rest in Loki's voice. _Be a hero._ "Sister," she whispered, faint enough to say she'd done so, faint enough to possibly go missed or be caught slow by the distracted Amora. "Loo-"

It happened fast. Volstagg, infuriated and confused in the instant after Lorelei's release of his mind, charged directly at Thor with his axe raised. "No! Not you too! Hold fast, my lord, I'll release thee!"

Volstagg, good hearted but always a bit slow on the initial charge. It took him time to build momentum and Thor dodged easily. He caught the startled look wrenching across Volstagg's face and made sure to make a proper stumbling noise anyway. Their weapons clanked hard against a pillar and Lorelei, no stranger to careful drama, tossed herself across the marble floor towards her sister's skirts. Her fingers knotted into the green silks. "They're free! Oh, Amora, save us! Forget Asgard, let us stand in triumph at Thanos's side and watch from that high place if they fall!"

The wail was _perfect_.

Amora whirled with the stone still aloft and controlled, her face lined by fury as she looked down at her sobbing, frightened sister. At first she didn't bother to care about Thor marking her carefully with a wind up of his hammer. She snarled. "Oh, very well. One more silly rescue. It's not as if this lot matters to me anyway. I won. And _you,_ Lorelei, can explain to Thanos this change in my plan."

Lorelei sobbed as Mjolnir flew through the air to make damn sure the role was committed to, but before it could connect with its target they both vanished in a flash of blue light. An afterimage of Amora's furious face was left behind, a scar in the air.

Volstagg dropped to the still-shaking floor in a heap. Thor settled for the nicked pillar, the rest of what had just happened nestling its shock into his face. Volstagg's voice sounded far away. "I have no idea what just happened. Did it work? Was the girl turned against her sister?"

"Yes, Volstagg. She made an odd call, one I don't fully understand. Yet we couldn't get the stone back. If there was a choice made here in this hour, it was only to save Asgard and Midgard both." Thor heaved a low, heavy breath. "Did we?"


	25. The Returning Star

25\. The Returning Star

. . .

It was Odin that saw the change in the sphere that represented Asgard first. As he started a quick, rough roar to acknowledge some distant victory, another rumble spread through the stone and soil of the realm. He cut himself short, turning to regard the distracted Loki.

Without needing to be asked, Loki ran his hands over one of the consoles he'd identified as potentially most useful. "If you mark an upgrade in our situation as no longer being in an unnaturally controlled descent but rather an uncontrolled and possibly speedier one, yes, we've just seen a useful change in our status." He studied the changing patterns on the console, the strange material itself morphing to physically describe new mathematics to its observer. The first step was to temporarily shut down the Bifrost, the second to reroute its cycling power through the machine. He hoped by now that there was no one still lingering on the iridescent bridge, because he knew a little about what that fall was going to be like.

"Can you stop it? Will the machine work?"

He tilted his head slightly as he regarded the console, his voice grim and wry. "Here's a quick question – at our acceleration, if I use this machine to spring us back into rightful position, how much _fun_ do you think that's going to be? Because I tell you now we're going to be rebuilding for centuries as it is. This will finish the job on a number of buildings still teetering. But what choice left?" He didn't bother to wait for an answer. He looked for a specific set of indicators, ones that matched their old place in the almost infinite breadth of space. "Hold on to something."

. . .

A wild, rising cheer went up from the agents assembled on the bridge of the Helicarrier as tracking confirmed and then confirmed again that the planetoid was no longer on a rapid trajectory towards them. Phil held back, his hand gripping the railing of the main observation platform. "Any clue where they went?"

Fitz looked up from his display and shook his head. He was also not joining the celebration yet. "Not certain. Satellites are picking out a burst of energy we're already trying to figure out. I'm running a hunch that it's something we've seen before – Bifrost energy, makes sense based on the little I got to read – but that doesn't tell me for certain they're all right."

"Okay." He took that in and went for still hoping for the best. Asgardians were durable. They had to be okay. "Daisy, how's the debris catch looking?"

"Latveria's still got the high atmosphere and they're being downright chatty about it. I'm trying to not think about the fact that there's about fifty of those weird robots up there just casually salmon-trawling for space junk like NBD. We tracked another forty two flashes of incinerated debris in the last ten minutes, all over the northeastern part of the Atlantic. It's slowing down. They missed some small stuff closer to the tropics, Stark got it before it hit. We've mopped up the rest so far, except for small crap that hopefully isn't gonna do anything weird to the water. You know, for _once_." She snorted, studying weapon charts. "Worst Asgardian junk probably does is put gold sprinkles in your poop."

Phil worked to not picture that, did anyway. He winced. "Kinda not surprised he called for central American waters. Probably go to Acapulco when this is over."

"I can't blame him," muttered Fitz. "Can we go to Acapulco?"

Several voices muttered "No" in his general direction, including the Director himself.

"Look on the bright side, people. We can all be really depressed and still really alive while we're not on vacation. I'll order some pizzas from the good place up the street when we're done cleaning here. Compromise?" Coulson clasped his hands together, trying to look authoritative and not still worried about the now-disappeared world. The crystal in his pocket was silent. He hated that, but for now there wasn't anything he could do about it.

The mutters he got in response indicated that, in fact, it wasn't a great compromise, but they wanted extra pepperoni on at least four of the pizzas.

. . .

The crystalline windows blew out instantly from the force and the pressure of the landmass above abruptly changing the rules of its own location. The facility yet held, but it was under a mighty duress. Dug in hard against the console and feeling glass shards patter hard against him, Loki knew it beat weaponizing the Bifrost this time. As he'd in fear and anger once tried to accomplish. This was at least technically an enhancement of what it was always intended to be; no sparking wild lightning, but still the rushing glare of rainbow light.

Of course a trip through the Bifrost always played on some momentum. It would likely – hopefully - slow as they reached position, but that was going to take several more minutes of raw and bumpy ride with the planetoid still set at angles that defied its normal gravity. Meanwhile he grit his teeth and hung on even as his stomach wanted to pack a lunch on its way to anywhere but here, glancing up once to regard where Odin gripped at another console set against the wall. The orrery's orbital displays swung wildly in the freefall but the structure held firm otherwise. The light from the rushing of space outside their atmosphere flashed along its orbs, dazzling and almost hypnotic. He tore his sight away and looked again at Odin, not certain why.

Then he knew. The old man's grip slipped a second later as the world jostled, his stout body toppling with a cry first against the machine and then catching a last-second grip against the shattered window. The king struggled, trying to reassert a stronger grasp on the frame. Loki could see a thin line of blood where broken glass had nicked the broad hand as he fell.

He didn't waste time thinking, instincts at the back of his mind calculating his own drop as his hands immediately let go of his own firm place in the world. He thudded against the base of the machine first, and he used that for his next automatic move, managing a slide across the floor to thud the bottoms of his booted feet against the broken bay of windows.

Almost not enough. The blood loosed Odin's grip just as he scrabbled into position to snake a few fingers into the fabric along the old man's arm. It tore as he sneered in frustrated anger, the All-Father dropping next into the small balcony outside with a pained groan. Not lost yet, but underneath him was now the rushing river of unstoppable space.

Now Loki had a moment to consider, his arm wrapping itself around the narrow but durable central bar of the broken window. Glass shards dug against him, too, but were mostly turned away by armor and durable black leather. He looked down at the tumbling figure of Odin, the last great king of Asgard, and he thought again about what a world without that shadow might look like. Those old ideas and illusions, that first, last, and greatest temptation. One more moment while the old man struggled, and it wouldn't even be by his hand. All he had to do this time was wait.

Odin looked up at him, that one eye fixing plain on him, and there was no fear there. Instead it was something like acceptance. Weariness. That set off a flash of some other raw emotion inside Loki, the realization that there was something within this situation the old man wanted. He tensed his arm where it held him in place and stretched the rest of himself out as best he was able. Now it was good enough. He managed a long-fingered grasp around Odin's cold wrist, all but snarling a mess of confusion and new anger down into the man's wrinkled face. "Well, now, here's a new kind of revenge come 'round at last."

The king stared back into him, calm and ready for his fall. The world jerked once more, nearly pulling Loki's arm out of the socket due to its force and the king's unbalanced weight and the snarl became a grimace of fresh pain. Still, his fingers tightened their grip. "This time, old man, I'm not going to let go."

. . .

Farbauti didn't look into the sheltered courtyard where a number of those pale refugees gathered to peer at the jotun who were either their captors or rescuers. She'd seen each assumption and more etched on their small faces as she came home through the gate, herself among the last to return before Heimdall cried enough and sealed it for safety and hope both. She stood high above, watching the skies as the storm parted to show the distant stars and the haze of other still-distant realms. From old she knew where to look, a tiny sparkle that her elders warned her held dangers to their kind. A sparkle gone for some few hours while the Aesir children huddled under hastily gathered furs to keep them safe from the eternal winter of Jotunheim. Her handmaidens' own children skipped around the edges of the courtyard to study them as they shivered under the weight of some possible future.

A future where these small creatures had no place to call home. Her expression was closed. It stayed closed, even when some of the youngest and less inured jotun snuck stolen bowls of the tiny, sweet ice berries close to the frightened children. They all watched the sky, as she did.

Her chin lifted when the sky changed before her eyes. It was oddly undramatic; a single point of light that was once gone and now returned. Her voice carried down into the courtyard, restrained and courtly, but pitched to reach all corners of her sanctuary. "Look, little lost ones. Your home yet stands." She half-turned, now looking down to see that the crowd had nearly doubled. Many yet remained inside, or were spread among the other nearby citadels. Almost four thousand Aesir had been pulled through the gate by her command. A fraction, but an unharmed fraction. "Battered, no doubt, and in need of care. But you live, and so does it."

She expected one of their victory cries, those bellowing roars her warriors knew all too well, and she braced for it, forever weary of their bravado. Instead, a few of them wept in open relief. She looked away again, wondering how great would be the damage to that old kingdom.

. . .

Rocket fumbled at his console controls when a planetoid suddenly reappeared in his cockpit view like it had something to prove. The abrupt emergence managed to set off all his pre-arranged proximity alarms and, for a weird moment, his rapid acceleration detections. "Ho shit!" was his first blurted reaction, almost drowned out under the sonic assault.

"I AM GROOT!" followed the obvious, in a tone distinctly similar to Rocket's outburst. The smell of fresh leaves filled the ship as Groot sagged back against his seat. He looked over to his friend, nodding wildly. "I. Am. Groot!"

"Right? Right? Craziest god-damned mufuggin Asgardians. Here, watch the console while I get the Corp on the line. Bet they got injured up the wazoo down there, could probably use a hand." Rocket stared at his channels while half of them lit up with space truckers holding terrified refugees in their cargo. For whatever reason, until the Corp got on the scene they were looking to him like he was in charge. Probably that Sif's fault. Nice lady. Sounded scary. Should probably meet Gamora. "First I gotta find an open one, it's like concert tickets just opened up."

"I am Groot?"

"Yeah, do that. Just pick 'em up, say 'I am Groot' in your most professional tone, then hang up while they still confused. We'll sort it out later."

. . .

He'd fought to get Odin pulled back into the orrery room as their world settled itself back into place, the old man apparently worn almost to the point of unconsciousness. The bleeding in the king's hands had already stopped, the cuts barely through the skin layer. The scars would be gone by morning. Loki himself now sat with his back pressed against that broken bay of windows, himself exhausted utterly and not entirely certain why he'd done what he'd done. There the old king lay silent and prone, alive. Still alive, and that much _was_ by his hand and deliberate choice. He no longer understood what he felt about Odin. It wasn't hate, he supposed. That had long since guttered out. But he didn't know what came after pity.

Finally, new silence hung over battered Asgard. He didn't want to go above yet. The castle was going to be cracked, certain spires lay to ruin and remnants of Chitauri lurking underneath to be chased out. The city itself half-shattered and burned black, he'd seen that before they even begun this last ditch effort. It was going to take time to heal, and if Thor had not somehow torn the stone away from its thief, there might not be that time. A great thing to fret at, but maybe not in this moment. He opened his mouth to sigh at that curse of Thanos still coming home to roost, the sound of it cut off when the old king shifted where he rested.

"I lost it all," said the king in a dead, weary mutter. "Condemned Asgard, condemned my soul. I lost both my sons in my foolishness. Both driven away, by my own acts. All of it lost."

Now Loki sighed, feeling familiar old discomforts and giving them a place inside to call their own. "No, you old idiot. We're still here."


	26. For Debts Unpaid

26\. For Debts Unpaid

. . .

The Nova Prime, Irani Rael, clasped her hands together with prim elegance before her uniform blue jacket and stared across Asgard's horizon from an open window that ran the length of the grand meeting chamber. The All-Father knew what she saw. His wounded sky still hung above a fire-flickered gloom and golden spires cracked and burned black along their elegant lines. But still, it was their sky and it was there to be seen by the living. She didn't look back at him while she spoke, so he regarded the back of her platinum-haired head. "We've got scanners on the way to help with the... infestation still troubling your undercastle, as you requested." Her professional tone gave away no surprise at the king's oddly humble request. Her next came with some knowing wryness. "The Corp also has engineers preparing to fix the spaceport's damage, as per our prior deal, but if they end up being ordered to help with any city repairs, I'm sure they'll oblige."

Odin settled his old and heavy form in the back of the wooden chair, his fingers fussing with a knotted whorl along the arm's rest instead of looking across the long table to the other invitee to this meeting. Not _his_ bargain, regarding the spaceport. That had been his imposter son, then full of lies and the occasional whimsical act of master statesmanship. He would let the matter stand without complaint, the spaceport being one of these latter examples of trickster's craft. "We will see, although we acknowledge the information with full gratitude. Our guards report that the tunnelers will be likely most active at night, when even our probes will have some trouble tracking them. We'll see if yours do any better. Thor and his warriors have driven out a dozen already but there are yet more down in the dark. We can ill-afford any further problems to our structural integrity, but they will not ultimately win our realm when that pair of thieves failed to destroy it."

He saw the jotun queen shift where she rested upon the largest and most elegant bench his guards could find on short notice. The attempt alone had been worth something in the woman's judgment, apparently, as she sat upon it with the ease of a noble born to the role. "We will continue to shelter those homeless while the immediate phase of rebuilding lasts, of course. Hospitality has been granted and will stand, going forward. We formally note we will not be rescinding it today, in the still-shadowing lee of your disaster."

His one eye flickered towards her as he inclined his head, as one leader to another. "Again, our gratitude to the people of Jotunheim. Their safety is precious and your safeguarding of them a matter of honor."

Farbauti studied him as he said that, wordless now and her sharp azure face giving away nothing for free.

"I'll be heading back to Xandar immediately to make an in-house statement on the loss of the infinity stone." Rael shook her head, turning away from the ruins to regard the table. Two Corp soldiers straightened up at the door to the room, ready to escort her back towards the port and her own star-shaped vessel. "It's a blow, All-Father, a serious one that's going to have ramifications well past the borders of your realm."

"It will, yes. We will remain in contact regarding what is to be done from here. One stone in the hand of that warlord is too many. There must be no more." He nodded to the Nova Prime as she cut a clean curtsy and left. The sigh he heaved was meant for himself and the queen alone.

"Your healers are managing the wounded?" The question was even and clinical.

"Our Eir has always held the mastery of logistics and persuasion in addition to her healer's arts. She has us well in hand, though we thank you for the question. If she sends word of need, we'll pass it on." His eye studied the worn tabletop and its inlaid golden whorls and florid streaks of runed poems, a relic that had survived since the reign of his grandfather's grandfather. No few battlemaps had rested on its surface in those many millennia. A few more might yet. Like the realm and himself, this old thing had survived too. "We mark five hundred dead so far, pulled from the collapse. Countless injured and many unknown, and so that toll will yet rise. But many more live." He nodded again, firmly now. "We will recover, despite our mistakes."

Farbauti gave a low, gentle snort at his heavy tone and what it might imply. "Spare me your confidences, old man. I ask for the sake of work between our realms, not for you to unburden to an unwary audience how hard your life has been of recent." She gestured at him with a long hand as he glanced back at her with an arched brow. She rose, and there was no malice in the blue curve of her smile. "I always hated that story of your faith, the implacable end of days. Today I find I hate it a little more yet. We must atone for our mistakes in the one life we know we are owed, All-Father. Fix what you've done in these days we've left. Don't press the burden off to the unknown next."

He absorbed her rebuke as he rose in respect as she prepared to leave as well, resolving to at least consider it in the hours to come. What he'd seen in Munin's eye was still a surprise and now he had some time to regard the memories plain. Two brothers once sundered, working together easily amidst the sanctuary of that young race. Peaceful moments, while he had lived in the strife of his own mind. Yes. There was much there to contemplate. "Thank you," he said, leaving aside formality. "For what our people have been to each other, this was not an expected outcome."

"And as I told my own, that is why I did it." She looked at him over the thick blue silk laid across her shoulder and her expression was mild and amused. "Heal well, old king. We will remain in contact while your people rest."

. . .

Loki rose from the stone bench set outside the meeting hall as Queen Farbauti emerged from it, bowing his head politely. "I am here to escort you to the Bifrost, as you requested."

He heard her snap her fingers at the handful of attendants she'd brought with her and left outside, him seated by the wall and them standing uncomfortably – and in one case, hunkering slightly under the low ceiling of this particular hall – and as one they trooped out ahead. They were now alone and her tone was blunt. No preamble or gentle warning from her about the salvo to come. "So you are, Odinson, for I will not leave with my debts unpaid. A question demands its answer, and so I'll ask it again now while I may: Why did you strike out at my Jotunheim?"

The chill he thought he expected became a block of ice instead, dropping into his stomach without ceremony. He sat down again hard, letting his face show that he simply didn't know how to begin that answer. Where it even began, or what any of it had meant. His lips tightened as his mind went blank, burrowing itself underneath those old and vast pains that had shaped him into something else for a long time.

Silence, except for the creak of distant builders trying to find firm ground once more. And then her voice, probing and sharp.

"You found out."

He flinched, shock making nerves bunch and tingle within his hands.

"I'm not the fool my mate was." He heard her sigh, found himself looking up into her tired face and knowing his own was a little too wide-eyed. "And furthermore, your Frigga all but told me in her correspondences. Subtle, she was. Decades of careful missives behind our lords' backs and then suddenly she had all these questions about jotun sociology. I told her, 'you've already got children, it's not much different.'" She crossed to another low bench not far from him and settled herself into it with slow regality, flicking her hand at the past's shadow behind her. "You found out, and by your stricken expression it was not a gentle discovery. There, I expect I've made it easier for you."

It was like a thorn being pulled out from the depths of a careless thumb, the red bead of blood released to streak down the skin. He couldn't keep his voice from wavering as he spoke, but at least he could speak. The words threatened to fall over each other on the way out of his mouth. "A giant grabbed me when Thor came, seeking the trouble he'd been goaded to. I didn't – I didn't know what I saw. One of ours, his skin turned black with frost. That didn't happen to me. When we came back, Thor was sent away and I was left there alone, wondering what had happened. I went to the vault and... Odin found me. Not a curse, not an accident. A secret stood revealed plain when I touched that old Casket." He swallowed on a dry throat, feeling it scrape and then coarsen his voice. "You know what Asgard says of jotun. The monster in the dark. The child-eaters. Worse."

"Yes." Neutral, almost hollow.

"What I heard was what I was. I heard him talk of things that no longer mattered. My brother was gone and I was... I was a _thing_. A stolen thing, a remainder, the scraps of a dead plan. What I heard in all of that was that I no longer mattered and that I never had. There were no choices or chances for me, I thought." He had to pause before continuing, looking at the mica flecks that patterned the cracked stone floor so randomly that it granted its own soothing kind of chaos. His throat ached. "Now I know that was the hour I broke. And not long after that black moment I thought... if jotun did not exist, how could I possibly be one?"

He heard the rustle of her skirts, but she said nothing to interrupt him. "Poor logic, I know. I know that now, too. But then I was so _desperate_ to not be a monster that I set about efficiently becoming one. All but died as one as I failed to end your realm, reborn as one when I was sent to Earth by Thanos to do his bidding. A... pet, a tool, though he also claimed the word 'family' as a useful lie. Like he does all his stolen children." He interlaced his tense fingers, not wanting to think. He kept staring at the floor, feeling like his eyes were stuck in that wide, stricken way. They felt wet, but he didn't cry. "I have been a monster. But it wasn't my birth that made me that, was it?" He uttered a thin laugh that sounded tinny and unstable in the echo of the hall. He thought of the giant Gymir, with his oddly gentle face. "I'm not owed answers."

"But I am. Now I have one, and I'll grant one in turn." He couldn't look at her, although he lifted his head slightly at what she said next. "I've won today. My revenge, my long-considered plan has taken its first step. I have Aesir still in my halls, under my protection. For long hours, many more of this realm's children shivered for safety under my roof. That safety freely given and they uneaten, I note with some bitter humor. And in the days to come, your driven mighty will collect themselves and say that it is the grace of their good king that brought that safety. That we are so cowed by his strength that we knelt and did a service owed to our betters." She snorted, dour. "But not all will believe this when it is said. I looked into enough faces there to find some willing to look back. Some will wonder, and some will ask questions that defy what has been taught. And in time, slow, hard time, a new idea of us will fester, one that does not contain the words 'monster' or 'beast.' I win."

He fought himself and managed a glance at her. She wasn't looking back. The jotun queen stared at something beyond the hall, and the alizarin eyes looked sad. He found himself studying the expression, recognizing some of the pain in it as she continued to speak. "We lost our war a long time ago. Well before that battle in Midgard's shallower winter, and far before your king was born. There's a bitter, complex story there and I've no time or energy for it at the moment. Perhaps someday. The struggle a thousand years ago was nothing more than a febrile death-throe, my mate's last stand before he huddled jealous in the dark with the rest of us to survive at the whim of your king, the victor. Trapped with his rage in that frozen pause between Jotunheim and Asgard, the one you and your brother broke for him. This is not the tale our warriors tell, of course, and it was the warrior clans that made Laufey our king back then. They worshipped Laufey, saw something in his kind of strength that they believed would reforge our people. The other clans, the historians and my _seidr_ and the crop folk all thought his way was dangerous, but the warriors won out. They had the strength of their anger, and we were tired from long years of being broken by war.

"So, Laufey's plan in those days was to become a black mirror of our enemy. He took the Aesir's way of battle, with all that honor and courage bound up tight within, and warped it into something that they might fear. He _wanted_ that fear, to use it as a weapon. Let these people believe what they like of us, he would conquer them and be mighty. He would be the beast in the shadows, with all the legends and the horrors writ true in his shape. And in so doing, he shut all other doors for us for a long time." She sighed. "They wedded me off in hopes that I could tame him. You cannot tame the storm, I found. He was elemental and fury alive. He threw away everything I could give him."

Farbauti's voice become quieter in the wake of a brief silence that he didn't dare interrupt. "My firstborn was a daughter, born in the silence of a long night. That was a good sign once, among the seers and sorcerers that raised me. My shaman put his gnarled hand on her small, almost too-small brow and said she could be a powerful mage, a girl of my true blood. Someone of value, that could heal us. A future's chance. And in the morning, it was my handmaiden that told me in a cracking, shamed voice that Laufey had dashed that fine blue brow to pieces. I had not given him a warrior. I gave him nothing. Nine children in all over some few centuries, nine. A lucky number. Each one given potential. All of them gone and I would permit him no more to kill. The last was thrown to trash and stone behind the temples to spite my Gods and my house, and he came to my cell and told me this proudly before he went off to lose his last day of war. What happened after that are the stories we think we know."

Loki almost flinched again when the blue face turned suddenly to regard him. "The monster is the thing we do not understand and so choose to fear, prince of Asgard. We teach each other to cast the monster away into the dark and we tell each other tales of how to drive the beast away without needing to look close into its eyes. I intend to crawl my people back into the light, not for Asgard's sake but for our own. There will be blood and struggle yet to come, and each mistake made on either side will set us all back and in unfairness they will say the beast yet lives. I find it worth it, that kind of fight. To chance standing at the edge of the old gulf made between our peoples and to shout _see us_."

He managed a thick swallow when the silence after her words filled the room. "If there's time."

"The warlord?" Farbauti shrugged with a distinct lack of concern and her smile was pragmatic. "I've faced extinction before. It is the natural state of the universe. I prefer defiance." She clapped her hands together, standing up in a single, elegant move. "So. I find I would very much like to go home. It is pleasant to stand here and see a future's chance, but it is warmer than I like and your sky, I must confess, strikes me a little depressing at the moment."

His legs felt feeble, but he rose. "I'm sorry. For all of it, for the things I did in... in fear. It still resolves nothing, but I'm sorry."

"I know. It's a start." She loomed over him, looking down into his face. It didn't hurt as much, nor was it as frightening, that clear study from a face so much like his own. "I've lost all my children, Odinson. Frigga saved both of hers. Do you understand?"

"Not entirely." He managed a smile. "I will try."

"Good enough." She gestured at the cracked arch that led towards the grand foyer and the streets of a broken but standing Asgard. "We are alive. Good enough."


	27. Epilogue: The Eye of the Storm

Epilogue: The Eye of the Storm

. . .

Amora didn't permit herself to tremble before the titan's fury, though it took all her discipline. He did frighten her, down through the hollows that stood in place of her soul. "I've done what _he_ couldn't, my lord. The Gem of Space is in your grasp at last. All for you." She bowed her head and let her hair tumble across the stones of Thanos's Sanctuary, feeling his eyes bore down through her. Just behind her, down another step, knelt Lorelei. She had said little so far, nothing in her own defense or her sister's. Only an explanation of what had occurred, as Amora demanded of her.

The icy serenity of her master's voice told her of the depths of his controlled rage. Still she would not tremble. "I sent one stone into the void to attract another and lost both in the process. All you've done is bring me back the one I demanded in the first place."

"The most powerful one, my lord."

"NO!" Now he roared the single word. She shrunk back, unable to entirely resist the animal's cornered urge to flee. "That petty void, full of emptiness waiting to be commanded. The _Mind_ is capable of being the most powerful in the right hands, which is why I sought it out first so long ago. I trusted it to Loki's hand only when he was well broken and bound to it, and even he could not harness it full in the time he held it. While you, Amora, in vanity and pride, defied me to use my prize to your own selfish ends. Another attempted this. It did not end well for him, and yet he died fortunate, for I would have seem him torn apart with the screams of his own agonies. Shall I show you what I intended for him?"

"My lord," she rasped.

"I did not command you to destroy Asgard. I bade you only to acquire the stone. You did that much, and in so doing you lost a legion of my troops-"

"Disposable ones, and they defied me at the end." She realized her mistake when the enormous golden boot stepped into her low view with a dull clank. She bowed her head lower.

"Interrupt me again, Amora, and I will have you _reminded_ of your place. I, who own your soul." She sensed Lorelei shift behind her as she flushed in hurt, furious shame. "You threw my troops away, acted of your own impulse, and so lit a beacon that now all may know some glimpse of what I will be capable of. Instead of a universe that knows little and so fears much, you have sold away my secrets to buy your petty victory. You, in arrogance, believed your tactics were better than _mine_." The words rumbled in his throat, black fire threatening to consume.

"Please," said Lorelei from behind her. "Please, my lord. Mercy."

The golden foot moved away, although he was still far too close for safety. Amora had the crawling sense he was regarding Lorelei with the same probing clarity he used with her. Thanos saw everything. It was his greatest gift. "Please? You ask for mercy for your ignorant fool of a sister?"

"Please," she repeated. "I have been freed to serve, and I am in awe of what stretches before me. But I am lost without my sister, for whom I waited so many years."

Another thud as Thanos stepped past Amora to regard her. His booming voice softened into a lower growl. "Today the elder would be lost without the younger. You begged for this same mercy for Asgard, as you tell in your version of the tale. Amora announces this to me as if it were a mistake." She bared her teeth at the filthy stones of his sanctum at the way he said her name. Some of them were still spattered with old blood.

"To shame them, to frighten them, to put them in awe. So that they may know that every second they yet live is by your whim." Lorelei's words were a whisper. "As we do."

"Clever woman. I hear you, charm without trickery's charm, looking for the right thing to say to a man that holds your blood in his fist."

"In honesty." The soft voice wavered just enough.

"That saves you for now, that alone." Thanos stepped away, moving towards the hovering stones that led up to his throne. Taking a risk, Amora lifted her head to observe him as he settled in, broad purple hands controlling its motions. He turned away to regard the edge of the universe. "You are welcome in Sanctuary, Lorelei. Welcome home, Amora. As sisters, you will complete each other. Serve me without foolishness from here and each day earn anew the mercy I might grant. Falter, and I will toss you from my keep to freeze into slow, screaming death in the void before me."

"Thank you, my lord," said Amora, swallowing down her anger as she rose to leave. Lorelei tugged at her sleeve, coaxing her away. The younger woman's fear was not faked. "For your mercy each day. For your gifts. For my freedom."

. . .

"Yes," said Thanos some time later as he regarded a nebula millions of light years away. His voice distracted as his thoughts roamed between stars. "My gifts."

In this, the hours of his private contemplation, he permitted his gloating. With a wave of his hand above the console set into his throne, he projected his glories before him. The shape of the blue cube was temporary, a simple geometric prison intended to border the expanding universe reflected within. A tesseract given form, indeed. Once he had the Space Gem fully tamed, he would let nature's chaos reign and the stone take its true form before placing it in the gauntlet. No corner of the universe would be hidden from him, not for long. He would be everywhere.

The other one was a translucent green. When he found it long ago, it was a simple cabochon emerald set into the arch above a gated pocket dimension of such purity that every dead soul that hid within it was at peace. He hadn't hesitated before tearing the cabochon free. The act ripped the souls of that guarded dimension apart, trapping them inside the stone as it unleashed a newfound, almost sentient hunger. He saw _her_ face in a glimpse then, Death's bone countenance regarding him in a manner he could not comprehend.

She was beautiful. He did not see her in the draining face of every spirit he fed to the Soul Gem, but he had seen her enough to know she was the other piece of him. He was trapped in Life, and she Death Herself. Desolate the two states of being, and he would meet her at last, in the middle, in the emptiness. He would touch her lovely face with his own fingers, not these shells that fled from him to test and torment, and he would at last know the peace of completion.

He grunted, letting the projection fade away. So the universe knew one of his secrets. They did not know them all. What he had done to Amora was not plain, despite what she had accomplished in Asgard; the desolation of her soul and the ability to feed that hollow place inside of her from the energy of others. He could do that to any of his children, tested it on more than one valuable servant, but she had been the most... viable. The process left her virtually unchanged, yet considerably more powerful. Her uselessly hidden anger did not concern him. He held that piece of her close, trapped in his dazzling green web. She had no choice but to serve the master of her soul, lest he let the stone consume her fully.

Thanos smiled. Let her rage, let her foolishness become a tool. Rage was useful, a flare in the dark that drew the moths home to burn.

He looked forward to the now inevitable return of those moths, his lost children. They would all come back. He mouthed their names into the void, lacing his fingers together as he recalled their faces.

"Nebula, my faithless blood." Quivering out there in the dark, wounded and full of hate in the wake of Ronan's fall. He loved her.

"Gamora, my poisoned blade." The prideful child, debasing herself among creatures she in foolishness called friends. The war to come would draw her close, as she and these things would try to kill him. He loved her.

"Loki, my fallen star." A fragile prince broken several times over, tricking others while always tricking himself at the end. Asgard's near disaster would drive him to the foot of his own throne, and Thanos delighted that he could not know for a certainty if the boy would come masked as friend or enemy. He loved him, too.

Save for the new sisters, the rest of his children were dead, many by his own hand. They would come home as well in the last second of the End, swathed in the skirts of their new mother, his love, their Death.

All would be well. But first there would be horror, writ high in his name.

. . .

Lucia von Bardas knelt gracefully atop her metal knee, her cyber eyes seeing only the green robed back of her king. "Event horizon has passed without further incident, my liege. We are processing final studies on the deep space readings."

"Anything of value?" Doom set his goblet aside and shifted the display to double-check his 'bots generated reports on the debris destroyed – and in a few cases collected – from the planetoid.

"Much of it is in line with your expectations. There was an almost incalculable burst of _something_ as the invading mass took position. First level is reporting they believe it has similarities to the Big Bang itself."

"The birth of the cosmos. And, some theorize, the shape of its death." Doom's voice thrummed, low and sonorous, from inside his mask. He sounded pleased. "There are legends here. Today we have seen some fraction of the truth inside them."

"My lord?"

"There are four constants that make the fundament of a universe, my Lucia. Death. Eternity. Infinity. Entropy. Strung between them are the six aspects, a weave that makes all life in the universe whole. Time, space, power, reality, soul, and mind. We have seen these in myth. We have seen these in prophecy, stolen from the whispers that rebirthed us. We know this understanding to be our salvation, in the hours before the end. The prophecy is coming true." Doom rose, his face lifting to the sky beyond Latveria. "Space has been opened. This was not the first. It will not be the last. We are fated, Lucia. Fated to be the last hope. Today we were acknowledged. They scraped before us and pleaded for rescue. This was granted, as it must be by a rightful lord. It is our responsibility in the days to come to be the bringer of mercy, and _I_ will wield the hand of glory in the last hour of the light. To save us all."

Lucia smiled, beatific. "I believe in you, my king."

He turned to her, cupping the line of her jaw with his cold metal hand. "Of course you do, Lucia. Of course. Our faithful."

. . .

 _"_ _You're live on Coast to Coast AM, coming in off our wild card line and with your host George Noory. Talk to me, caller."_

 _"_ _Yeah, um, I can't identify myself, but my bud, he like... he works at a place I can't name but you'd know it, and he's got proof that something almost happened last week. Like, bad. Apocalypse bad... it scared me, man. He came home shakin', called me over for beers. Didn't say anything till he got three in him, and when he did, man..."_

 _"_ _What'd he say?"_

 _"_ _He said he was watching the skies, like, with every major observatory on Earth and... and like twelve amateur dudes that got word where to look and it was like we had two moons for a while, George. A little one, 'bout to collide right with us. Nothing got on the news! And those amateurs, they got shut up hard. I heard a rumor they got black helicopters out there again! THOSE guys!"_

 _"_ _The mainstream media's been adamant that Strategic Homeland's been gone a long time, caller."_

 _"_ _They ain't really gone. I swear man, something happened. You get in there, you get the paperwork from the observatories, you're gonna find something there. Like, it's just been crazy! We got aliens from space, we got aliens from in here, my mom's scared, George. She's been prayin' in front of the TV. Are we gonna be alright?"_

 _"_ _We're going to be all right, caller. Thank you for checking in with us. Okay, I'm going to let you go and we're going to open up the lines again. If you've got more information on this event last week, you can also come to our website at..."_

 _. . ._

Foggy Nelson trotted up beside Matt as he picked his way up the street towards the steps of their shared law office. "Uh, I think we got feds in the office, dude." In the red veil that passed for what his senses put together in a replacement for his sight, Matt saw the sonic afterimage of his friend's shrug. "At least one of them is a fed? I think?"

"Foggy, what makes you think they're feds? Nice suits? Cheap car?" Matt tugged open the door to the building, his thumb holding the cane in place. "They show a badge?"

"Guy in charge is super polite. Older guy. Kinda bald, decent suit. Yeah, they had an ugly car. Cheap airport rental. They don't give me names."

Matt sighed and kept going through the halls and then into his office's tiny lobby. He 'saw' Karen bob her head at him, a liquid trail of motion through still air, before she caught herself and cleared her throat in a more audible greeting. "The other one?"

"Man, I don't know. The other guy is just weird. He looks like the TV idea of a fed. You know, kind of creepily good looking, suit way too expensive for the job? You'll get a whiff of them in a moment, you tell me, Matt."

He didn't know, choosing to not remind his friend that he had only a few clues as to what the TV idea of a fed looked like. But he _did_ get a whiff. He rested his hand on the doorknob, pausing as he recognized something off inside the consultation room. He _knew_ that presence. A cooler spot in the world than what a human could make, heartbeat just barely off kilter. He grimaced, then yanked the door open anyway. "Hey."

"Hi!" said the man with an older voice. He could make out something like an outline, noticed immediately one hand was more dense and way heavier than the other when the fed – Foggy was definitely at least sort of right just based on the cologne and aftershave mix – shifted in his seat. "Nice to meet you face to face, Mr. Murdock."

"Yeah." Matt turned until he knew the red lenses of his glasses were facing his friend. "Foggy? Why don't you take Karen for a quick breakfast run?"

Foggy leaned in with a hand up to mask his face, whispering as close to inaudible as possible. "Is this your night job?"

The other man, the alien that had chased him across one of The Hand's few remaining business properties, laughed low and bitterly. At least he was amused. Matt clapped Foggy on the shoulder a little too hard. He took the hint. A second later he heard a quick conference that ended in favor of omelets, and he shut the door.

"Does this count as 'your terms," Mr. Murdock?" The alien's voice was elegant, cut with an undertone of tension. That seemed out of place.

He folded his hands atop his walking cane, frowning. "Not really. Guess I'll adapt. So, what is this, a shakedown? Recruitment? Better not be."

"A survey." The other one answered. "I'm Phil Coulson, director of SHIELD. I authorized the move on your turf. Sorry for stepping on your toes a few weeks ago. We're a little jumpy about things lately. Trying to make sure there aren't any more mistakes."

"That'd be nice. So, what, we have a nice talk and then maybe you want to put me on that index I've been hearing about underground? I got a whole discussion ready about legality and privacy rights, I need to warn you."

"Let's leave that for some other time. We try to make friends where we go, Mr. Murdock. In case things go wrong, things need... avenging. Stuff like that." The man's two mismatched hands folded together. Matt sensed the change in the air as they moved, smelled the almost plasticky leather when the fingers bent.

"I try to not make vengeance a thing, Mr. Coulson. It's not what a good Catholic should chase after. Call me more of a defender. Public defender, private defender... you know. Try to keep it from getting to that point." Matt smiled easily.

"I like that. Tell you what, you keep defending Hell's Kitchen, and we send you little heads up notices to try and help out now and then. Leaving one for you right now." The gloved, heavy hand tapped a folder on the table. They did their homework, these guys. By the rhythm of the paper-scrape Matt could tell they'd used a Braille printer.

"What's the downside?"

"You got to sleep at night knowing the world's going to get a lot bigger around you, and someday you won't be able to keep these couple of blocks safe by yourself. We'll be around to help with that. We got some connections you might use. If you want it." Coulson stood up, the alien following next. "Anyway, just a quick visit to clear the air. Get some names on the table. If we scoot out of here now, you can catch up to those omelets."

Matt reached out a hand, not quite touching the tall one as he glided by almost silently. "I didn't get an introduction."

"You don't want one." The man dodged further away from his hand. "I'm not exactly the nicest of individuals. I'm only here to ensure a... witness verification."

"How's your leg?"

"Better." He heard the fangy, unhappy smile. "Enjoy your small kingdom. While you still have it."

"Is that a threat?"

His response had all the hallmarks of earnestness and it made something nervous in his gut. "No, Mr. Murdock. It is not."

. . .

Coulson fumbled with the driver's side door, glancing at the withdrawn Loki on the other side of the car. "Speaking of omelets..."

"I'm meeting Thor at two." The grey-green eyes flickered towards him as he laid both hands on the car's roof for a moment. His pale face still had a gloom draped over it, had ever since he came back from Asgard. The gloom had faded slightly when he saw the team was genuinely delighted to know he was all right, but Phil knew the rest. The brief space of peace Death suggested they still had at the end of the London matter was now gone. Bringing him out for a little loose end tying hadn't done much to cheer him in the face of that. The company was still good enough to tweak a tiny smile at the corner of Loki's mouth. "Don't know yet after that. I don't think he's had Korean food before, however. That ought to be amusing. If he begs for milk my life will have had meaning. The thing I asked?"

"I'll get 'em together when you need, and you're officially off field work for now. Just keep me in the loop. I kinda hated getting a five minute 'we're all gonna die' warning, though thanks for giving one anyway."

"You're exaggerating." Loki shrugged. "Not by much. Still and yet a little time left before the worst, Coulson, but I can't know. And in a way, that's the final riddle. Time." He frowned, thoughtful.

"There's never enough of it anyway." Coulson dropped into the driver's seat, tapping on the roof to tell Loki to get in. "Yes, I know you meant yet another infinity stone. I paid attention. Look, I can't get hung up on being afraid of the worst. I'm human. I'm not even scared of Death anymore; she came over for take-out night last month with Strange. All I can do is keep going."

"Coulson." Loki stopped for a moment and shook his head as he buckled in. "You have no idea what the worst can truly be. That's a gift your species has had for a long time. But there's a real chance we're all going to find out."

"Yeah, well." Coulson put the car in drive, looking at the congested Manhattan street ahead of him. "Bring Thanos on. Humans will punch him in the face, too."

He was surprised by a small but genuine laugh. "That's the archived surveillance footage I want on _my_ phone." The laugh faded as he became contemplative again. "Do you think everyone hates their fathers? At least for a while, anyway."

Coulson reared back a little at the tangent. "I don't know about hate, Loki. Maybe something like that, as a phase. I thought I did when I was a kid. Was way more complex than that."

"Mm. I've had three of them. Fathers. One by birth, and that one left me to die. I hated him when I found out, and I led him to his death. The second, and that one I realize now did love his family. But he also had plans for his children, plans where he didn't always consider what we felt. We were loved, but we were also subject to what he wanted. And for a while I've hated him as well. _Complex_ is a good word. I will never try to kill him again. I don't know what that means."

Loki became quieter. "And the third. Thanos loves his children the way you love a chambered bullet."

Coulson winced at the sudden coldness in his voice.

"I'm going to see that one killed, too. I promise."

. . .

The fire crackled low in the brazier set by the door of Farbauti's chambers, just enough light to line the edge of her handmaiden as she cut a fast curtsy and let herself out for the night. Farbauti barely noticed her leave, busy contemplating tomorrow and the day after. There were halls set far away from the privacy of her own chambers, the long-disused guest rooms that were now lit with a bright warmth unnatural to her realm. She could hear singing from them occasionally, and while she always tensed for a moment in the concern it would become one of those aggrandizing Aesir war chants, they never did. No battle in her halls – although more than one of the old war-brothers sat in her cells for treachery that blessedly never reached a guest's door, and a few of the older Aesir men looked angrily at their own with bruised brows that had a rather guessable source.

Once she heard one of the old jotun songs drifting through the air, sung by a young and tremulous voice. Tonight the silence rested in a crystalline lightness instead, the night sky brisk and full of pretty snow.

She took the small, plain box from her desk and lifted its lid to study its hidden prize. The only thing she had stolen from Asgard – and that not during its near fall. A shard of hard and permanent ice plucked from the mage halls, still capable of holding a captured memory. She palmed it, considering, then looked down to study what it showed.

There, Munin's eye caught plain the broad white hands of a younger king still trembling as the adrenaline of battle drained, trembling as he reached for the fragile little thing that would soon die of exposure if he was not given mercy. The hands reached under the blue back to scoop up the baby, and Munin's black eye caught no expression of hate on the bearded face. On the blue one, that lucky ninth child, was a smile and from the lips came a fearless little burble. In the midst of war's payout of senseless death, this struggling small life.

A survivor.

Farbauti smiled and closed her fingers around the shard, hiding the rest of what it could show. It didn't matter to her. She had seen what she wanted, and of late she had heard the rest. Then she tightened her hand around it, squeezing easily until the ice cracked and then shattered. The remnants she let fall, marking their rainbow sparkle in the flicker of the brazier's light. She had no need to dwell overmuch on old memories, no desire to keep them hoarded like jewels. What mattered was being alive.

More than good enough, she decided. It was a victory.

 _~Fin_

 _Yesternight the sun went hence,_

 _And yet is here today._

 _~ John Donne_

 _10/10/15 MDS._ _All relevant rights remain in the hands of Marvel with no infringement intended. All realities are fair game. All half-mad demigods do whatever the hell they want._

. . .

 ** _Notes (sorry):_**

This one was about families. Think that came across.

Enchantress Amora and Lorelei are weird. As sisters of Asgard and students of the sorceress Karnilla, you never know if they're going to fight each other, team up, fight each other while teaming up, team up and then fight each other just in time to ruin their compatriot's plan, or just go around seducing the hell out of everyone else while vaguely hating their target and each other. They are every Facebook status incarnate. With Lorelei in MCU canon via Agents of SHIELD, there's a lot of theorization that we may see her and maybe her sister in Ragnarok. I ran with it not only because of that, but because the motif of two siblings who could really get things done when they work together is basically the entire Thor movie canon. I liked the parallel. Also, done right, they are dangerous as Hel. They'll be back.

Farbauti has almost no role in Marvel, whether in comics or in cinema. In the original mythology Farbauti is actually the male partner, but this got flopped around with Laufey's appearance in a 1965 issue of Journey Into Mystery. There's even only one drawn panel featuring our Loki's genetic mother to date to my knowledge, and that's in the pages of the older LOKI mini by Esad Ribic and Robert Rodi. It's been animated since as 'Thor: Blood Brothers.' Fandom's adopted and run with her, with fanart often depicting an elegant, royal Jotun queen with, occasionally, some resemblance to Charlize Theron. (personally I sense a bit of Theron, yes, but also Iman, the incredibly regal supermodel and actress)

I had no trouble giving her a voice. She popped up fully realized when I wrote Sleipnir. This story was a chance to give what I 'knew' of her a lot more room to show.

The other named jotun – good natured Gymir and that dick Thiazi – are taken from mythological lists.

The interpretations of modern jotun culture are drawn from mythology and then altered, with the jotun being a very old precursor race that are sometimes at odds with the old aesir, and sometimes a great source of wisdom. They did not build the orrery, in case I never get back to that thread. But their ancestors know who did.

Meanwhile I made up that orrery, the Root of Yggdrasil, and if you spot some Dark Crystal influence in how it was described, well... It made sense against the whole weird stew of MCU Asgard, with magic and SPACE LASERS both. I wouldn't be surprised if someone comes to me and goes 'hey, you didn't make it up, I found this issue over here...' but at this point I'm pretty sure I made it up. I think.

I'm guessing the Soul Gem will be green. There's two colors left for two hidden stones in the various hints the films have given, green and a kind of stale-looking coppery brown, and I went with the one that also overlaps with envy. It's also the color it is in the comics. The soul gem does tend towards hungry sentience and is arguably the most dangerous when uncontrolled. There, it's also considered the most powerful. I've flopped that around, because I truly do think mind and reason and belief and all that other good wild shit a brain does is capable of being the top of the heap. But only when used right. Only when it has a specific vision.

I feel like Thor: Ragnarok is going to be the Empire Strikes Back of the MCU. I don't see that having a blindly happy ending. I also don't know if it's going to resemble this in the least. Probably not, especially if the latest casting rumors are true. Kinda hope it doesn't, really, because when I set out on this series, I didn't want to spend a lot of time writing predictive fic. I didn't want to spend a lot of time going over the stuff we're all going to pay to go see in the theatre, probably at seven or midnight before launch day, dressed in our 'Up All Night to Get Loki' tees.

Damn right I have one.

Anyway, much of the point of the Codex for me (besides having a good time shoving Rocket and Groot in anywhere that I can get away with, which is nowhere near enough), is to show Loki the repercussions of what he's done in the past, the hole he dug for himself, and to give him some sort of chance to say 'I'll face that. I'm willing to change and to fight for change.'

So, Thanos is kind of unavoidable in the context of that arc. And in this continuity, he has two stones, knowledge of where several more are, implacable drive, is kind of fixated, and really scary in general even without all this. And now he's fully awake, far earlier than he should be on the timeline.

Thanos is coming. The next long fic, I think, opens with him at work. No more shadow-dancing.

There's one more short coming before Thanos arrives, however. Probably see that in late November, with the long fic (tentatively going with 'When the Man Comes Around') not yet scheduled but already getting outlines. Thank you for all the reads, kudos, notes, and fanart! (of which there's more today, bookmarked on AO3!) See you soon and have a good holiday meanwhile!


End file.
